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A Life in CognitionThought, Behaviour, and Thought-Chunking

A Life in Cognition: Thought, Behaviour, and Thought-Chunking [Thoughts are mechanisms that regulate behaviour. In humans, conscious thoughts play a larger role than in animals, because they can be mulled and decided upon. As brain mass increases across species, memory capacity surges significantly, rapidly multiplying the number of possible thought combinations that regulate behaviour. One such tool that allows thought combinations is chunking thoughts. It is apparent that instead of uttering a whole thought, we can use a single signal that promptly changes the other’s behaviour (e.g., “Don’t!”). These fragments may just as well be called words. When humans started using words to designate some of the behaviour-regulating thoughts, a fascinating array of possibilities opened up. The chunking of thoughts and denoting each chunk with a sound or a word equipped the human group to use several types of thoughts, several types of words in a cooperative fashion. There have been great debates about when and why spoken language appeared and what relation it had with other requirements of social life. This paper proposes a scenario for the emergence of language.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A Life in CognitionThought, Behaviour, and Thought-Chunking

Part of the Language, Cognition, and Mind Book Series (volume 11)
Editors: Gervain, Judit; Csibra, Gergely; Kovács, Kristóf
Csányi, Vilmos
A Life in Cognition — Dec 3, 2021
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Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Copyright
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
ISBN
978-3-030-66174-8
Pages
77 –80
DOI
10.1007/978-3-030-66175-5_6
Publisher site
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Abstract

[Thoughts are mechanisms that regulate behaviour. In humans, conscious thoughts play a larger role than in animals, because they can be mulled and decided upon. As brain mass increases across species, memory capacity surges significantly, rapidly multiplying the number of possible thought combinations that regulate behaviour. One such tool that allows thought combinations is chunking thoughts. It is apparent that instead of uttering a whole thought, we can use a single signal that promptly changes the other’s behaviour (e.g., “Don’t!”). These fragments may just as well be called words. When humans started using words to designate some of the behaviour-regulating thoughts, a fascinating array of possibilities opened up. The chunking of thoughts and denoting each chunk with a sound or a word equipped the human group to use several types of thoughts, several types of words in a cooperative fashion. There have been great debates about when and why spoken language appeared and what relation it had with other requirements of social life. This paper proposes a scenario for the emergence of language.]

Published: Dec 3, 2021

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