Browsing by Subject "Language and cognition"

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    A cognitive approach to analyzing demonstratives in Tunisian Arabic.
    (2009-11) Khalfaoui, Amel
    Demonstratives have traditionally been analyzed as `pointing words' whose primary function is to indicate relative spatial or temporal distance of a referent from speech participants. Recent research argues that the meaning of demonstratives is not limited to spatial distance and has given alternative accounts for the use of demonstratives that focus on other cognitive and pragmatic meanings (e.g., Gundel, Hedberg and Zacharski 1993, Enfield 2003, Botley and McEnery 2001, OH 2001). This dissertation contributes to research that looks at alternative meanings for demonstratives, focusing on Tunisian Arabic (TA). The goal of the dissertation is two-fold. First, working within the Givenness Hierarchy framework (Gundel et al.), it aims to show how TA demonstratives are used to indicate cognitive status, the assumed memory and attention status of a referent in the mind of the addressee. A combined methodology of questionnaires and corpus analysis is used to test hypotheses formed in a previous study (Khalfaoui: 2004) about proposed correlations between cognitive status and single demonstrative forms in TA and extend the analysis to phrases with double demonstratives. The second goal of this dissertation is to show how other factors can further restrict the choice among certain demonstrative forms that encode the same cognitive status. Specifically, it is shown that when there is more than one activated referent, communicators choose the demonstrative haða as a determiner, but not as a pronoun, although both the determiner and the pronoun encode the same cognitive status. I argue that Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986/1995) provides a cognitive explanation for why communicators avoid the demonstrative pronoun in such case. This dissertation also discusses the advantages and limitations of the questionnaire and the corpus analysis as research tools.
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    Language and conflict detection in the development of executive function
    (2014-10) Doebe, Sabine
    The ability to override habit and exercise conscious control over thought, emotion and action, termed `executive function' (EF), is a defining feature of human cognition. While a great deal is understood about the underlying cognitive processes and neural substrates of EF, much remains unknown about how it develops. Conflict monitoring theory has emphasized the role of prefrontally-based conflict monitoring and detection mechanisms in the activation of control processes. In contrast, Vygotsky's sociocultural theory of development suggests that experience, especially language, plays a key role in the emergence of higher-cognitive functions like EF from more basic cognitive processes. Both of these accounts have received broad empirical support, but they have never been considered in relation to one another. The current research tested the hypothesis that linguistic experience plays a key role in the development of conflict detection and EF. Study 1 tested the prediction that children who notice and focus on contrasting states of affairs show better EF. A significant relation was found between three-year-old children's EF and their tendency to focus on contrast indexed by their use contrastive negation on a novel picture book task, controlling for age and verbal IQ. In Study 2, a training experiment was conducted using a pre-post control group design in which three-year-old children were provided with linguistic experience involving the use of negation to contrast objects, attributes, and actions, and change in EF performance on a battery of EF measures was assessed. Results indicate that children exposed to contrastive negation showed greater increases in EF from pre- to post-test compared to children in two control conditions: an active control condition that experienced the stimuli without contrastive negation, and an inactive control condition in which children were read storybooks. Taken together, these findings provide new evidence that linguistic experience with contrastive negation used to highlight incompatibility may play a key role in the development of EF by increasing children's sensitivity to conflict, and possibly also by facilitating inhibition of task-irrelevant representations. Implications for theories of EF are discussed.