Mind over grammar: reasoning in aphasia and development

Research on propositional reasoning (involving 'theory of mind' understanding) in adult patients with aphasia reveals that reasoning can proceed in the absence of explicit grammatical knowledge. Conversely, evidence from studies with deaf children shows that the presence of such knowledge is not sufficient to account for reasoning. These findings are in keeping with recent research on the development of naming, categorization and imitation, indicating that children's reasoning about objects and actions is guided by inferences about others' communicative intentions. We discuss the extent to which reasoning is supported by, and tied to, language in the form of conversational awareness and experience rather than grammar.

[1]  M. Legerstee,et al.  Precursors to the development of intention at 6 months: understanding people and their actions. , 2000, Developmental psychology.

[2]  Lori Markson,et al.  Capacities underlying word learning , 1998, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[3]  H. V. D. Lely,et al.  Evidence for a grammar-specific deficit in children , 1998, Current Biology.

[4]  S Walker,et al.  Understanding theory of mind in children who are deaf. , 2000, Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines.

[5]  Ra Varley,et al.  Science without grammar: scientific reasoning in severe agrammatic aphasia. , 2002 .

[6]  Stephanie D. Teasley,et al.  Perspectives on socially shared cognition , 1991 .

[7]  G. Csibra,et al.  Goal attribution without agency cues: the perception of ‘pure reason’ in infancy , 1999, Cognition.

[8]  Michael Siegal,et al.  Evidence for cognition without grammar from causal reasoning and ‘theory of mind’ in an agrammatic aphasic patient , 2000, Current Biology.

[9]  M. Hoffman,et al.  Review of Child Development Research , 1966 .

[10]  R. Gelman.  First Principles Organize Attention to and Learning About Relevant Data: Number and the Animate‐Inanimate Distinction as Examples , 1990 .

[11]  Robin I. M. Dunbar.  Coevolution of neocortical size, group size and language in humans , 1993, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[12]  D. Hilton.  THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF REASONING : CONVERSATIONAL INFERENCE AND RATIONAL JUDGMENT , 1995 .

[13]  Peter Carruthers,et al.  Language and Thought , 1998 .

[14]  Dare A. Baldwin,et al.  Early referential understanding: Infants' ability to recognize referential acts for what they are. , 1993 .

[15]  D. Muir,et al.  Three-year-olds' difficulty with the appearance--reality distinction: is it real or is it apparent? , 2000, Developmental psychology.

[16]  Randi C. Martin,et al.  Short-term memory and sentence processing: Evidence from neuropsychology , 1993, Memory & cognition.

[17]  L. Weiskrantz,et al.  Thought Without Language , 1988 .

[18]  W. Merriman,et al.  How shall a deceptive thing be called? , 1995, Journal of Child Language.

[19]  H. Wimmer,et al.  Three-year-olds' difficulty with false belief: The case for a conceptual deficit , 1987 .

[20]  Michael Siegal,et al.  Representing Inner Worlds: Theory of Mind in Autistic, Deaf, and Normal Hearing Children , 1999 .

[21]  J. Dunn,et al.  Why talk about mental states? The significance of children's conversations with friends, siblings, and mothers. , 1996, Child development.

[22]  Kevin J. Riggs,et al.  Children's Reasoning and the Mind , 2000 .

[23]  M. Siegal,et al.  Changing focus on the representational mind: Deaf, autistic and normal children's concepts of false photos, false drawings and false beliefs , 1998 .

[24]  A. Woodward.  Infants selectively encode the goal object of an actor's reach , 1998, Cognition.

[25]  Rebecca J. Brand,et al.  Breaking the language barrier: an emergentist coalition model for the origins of word learning. , 2000, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development.

[26]  A. Leslie,et al.  Autistic children's understanding of seeing, knowing and believing , 1988 .

[27]  H. Brownell,et al.  Acquired `theory of mind' impairments following stroke , 1999, Cognition.

[28]  J. Villiers,et al.  Linguistic determinism and the understanding of false beliefs. , 2000 .

[29]  G. Deák,et al.  On having complex representations of things: preschoolers use multiple words for objects and people. , 1998, Developmental psychology.

[30]  M. Siegal,et al.  Insights into theory of mind from deafness and autism. , 2000 .

[31]  Patricia Howlin,et al.  Origins of cognitive skills , 1986 .

[32]  W L Custer,et al.  A comparison of young children's understanding of contradictory representations in pretense, memory, and belief. , 1996, Child development.

[33]  Paul Bloom,et al.  Young children are sensitive to how an object was created when deciding what to name it , 2000, Cognition.

[34]  K. Sullivan,et al.  A componential view of theory of mind: evidence from Williams syndrome , 2000, Cognition.

[35]  H. V. D. Lely.  Learning from Grammatical SLI Response to J.B. Tomblin and J. Pandich (1999) , 1999, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[36]  R. Brown.  How shall a thing be called. , 1958, Psychological review.

[37]  C. Scott,et al.  The development of theory of mind in deaf children. , 1998, Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines.

[38]  Peter Carruthers,et al.  Language, Thought and Consciousness: An Essay in Philosophical Psychology , 1996 .

[39]  M. Siegal.  Beyond methodology: frequently asked questions on the significance of conversation for development , 1999 .

[40]  S. Levinson,et al.  Language Acquisition and Conceptual Development , 2001 .

[41]  H. Wimmer,et al.  Beliefs about beliefs: Representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children's understanding of deception , 1983, Cognition.

[42]  A. Meltzoff.  Understanding the Intentions of Others: Re-Enactment of Intended Acts by 18-Month-Old Children. , 1995, Developmental psychology.

[43]  E. Clark.  Conceptual perspective and lexical choice in acquisition , 1997, Cognition.

[44]  H. Grice.  Logic and conversation , 1975 .

[45]  L. Surian,et al.  Sources of Performance on Theory of Mind Tasks in Right Hemisphere-Damaged Patients , 2001, Brain and Language.

[46]  Noam Chomsky,et al.  Rules and representations , 1980, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[47]  Roger S. Brown,et al.  Linguistic determinism and the part of speech. , 1957, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[48]  J. Mandler,et al.  Drinking and driving don't mix: inductive generalization in infancy , 1996, Cognition.

[49]  M. Gazzaniga,et al.  Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of the Mind , 1998 .

[50]  Michael Siegal,et al.  Theory of Mind and Pragmatic Understanding Following Right Hemisphere Damage , 1996, Brain and Language.

[51]  S. Baron-Cohen,et al.  Does the autistic child have a “theory of mind” ? , 1985, Cognition.

[52]  D. Bishop,et al.  Development of the Children's Communication Checklist (CCC): a method for assessing qualitative aspects of communicative impairment in children. , 1998, Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines.

[53]  M. Tomasello,et al.  Fourteen-through 18-month-old infants di eren-tially imitate intentional and accidental actions , 1998 .

[54]  Herbert H. Clark,et al.  Grounding in communication , 1991, Perspectives on socially shared cognition.

[55]  Patrice D. Tremoulet,et al.  Perceptual causality and animacy , 2000, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[56]  M. Siegal.  Knowing Children: Experiments in Conversation and Cognition , 1991 .

[57]  J. Astington,et al.  A longitudinal study of the relation between language and theory-of-mind development. , 1999, Developmental psychology.

[58]  K Plunkett,et al.  Rapid word learning by fifteen-month-olds under tightly controlled conditions. , 1998, Child development.

[59]  E. Spelke,et al.  Science and Core Knowledge , 1996, Philosophy of Science.

[60]  M A Nowak,et al.  The evolution of language. , 1999, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[61]  Susan Carey,et al.  Language acquisition and conceptual development: Whorf versus continuity theorists: bringing data to bear on the debate , 2001 .

[62]  D. Bickerton.  Language and Human Behavior , 1996 .