title: How Language Programs the Mind.
abstract: Many animals can be trained to perform novel tasks. People, too, can be trained, but sometime in early childhood people transition from being trainable to something qualitatively more powerful-being programmable. We argue that such programmability constitutes a leap in the way that organisms learn, interact, and transmit knowledge, and that what facilitates or enables this programmability is the learning and use of language. We then examine how language programs the mind and argue that it does so through the manipulation of embodied, sensorimotor representations. The role language plays in controlling mental representations offers important insights for understanding its origin and evolution.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
authors.forename: Gary
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Lupyan
authors.affiliation: Department of Cognitive Science, University of California at San Diego.
authors.forename: Benjamin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Bergen
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D003142:Communication; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007802:Language
keywords: Categorization; Embodiment; Language; Language and thought; Language evolution