Cognitive Interfaces

This book seeks to explain fundamental aspects of the relationship between language and cognition. It brings new perspectives to bear on the architecture of mind and brain and explores the relationship between language and cognition. It considers how information is linked between different cognitive levels so that, for example, it is possible to explain how people can talk about what they see. In the opening chapter the editors address the general issues underlying current research on cognitive interfaces and set each chapter in context. The book is then divided into four parts. Parts One and Two discuss the properties of two interfaces: (a) the conceptual-to-syntactic structure interface and (b) the conceptual-to-spatial structure interface. Part Three examines constraints on the lexical interface by looking at properties of the former two interfaces at the word level. Part Four considers how the neural architecture of the brain constrains mapping relations between different kinds of cognitive information. The authors, drawn from experimental psychology, linguistics, and computer science, together offer a convincing demonstration of the value of an interdisciplinary approach to understanding how different kinds of cognitive information are linked in the mind and brain to perform different cognitive tasks.