How Abstract (Non-embodied) Linguistic Representations Augment Cognitive Control

Abstract

Recent scholarship emphasizes the scaffolding role of language for cognition. Language, it is claimed, is a cognition-enhancing niche (Clark, 2006), a programming tool for cognition (Lupyan and Bergen, 2016), even neuroenhancement (Dove, 2019) and augments cognitive functions such as memory, categorization, cognitive control, and meta-cognitive abilities ("thinking about thinking"). Yet, the notion that language enhances or augments cognition, and in particular, cognitive control does not easily fit in with embodied approaches to language processing, or so we will argue. Accounts aiming to explain how language enhances various cognitive functions often employ a notion of abstract representation. Yet, embodied approaches to language processing have it that language processing crucially, according to some accounts even exclusively, involves embodied, modalityspecific, i.e., non-abstract representations. In coming to understand a particular phrase or sentence, a prior experience has to be simulated or reenacted. The representation thus activated is embodied (modality-specific) as sensorimotor regions of the brain are thereby recruited. In this paper, we will first discuss the notion of representation, clarify what it takes for a representation to be embodied or abstract, and distinguish between conceptual and (other) linguistic representations. We will then put forward a characterization of cognitive control and examine its representational infrastructure. The remainder of the paper will be devoted to arguing that language augments cognitive control. To that end, we will draw on two lines of research, which investigate how language augments cognitive control: (i) research on the availability of linguistic labels and (ii) research on the active usage of a linguistic code, specifically, in inner speech. Eventually, we will argue that the cognition-enhancing capacity of language can be explained once we assume that it provides us with (a) abstract, non-embodied representations and with (b) abstract, sparse linguistic representations that may serve as easy-to-manipulate placeholders for fully embodied or otherwise more detailed representations.

Exploring the Link between Novel Task Proceduralization and Motor Simulation

“…It has been recently shown that novel mapping implementation is disrupted by concurrent verbal demands (van't Wout et al, 2013;van't Wout & Jarrold, 2020) or increasing the declarative working memory load (Formica et al, 2020). These results stress the role of a verbal component during instructed performance, in line with the idea that more abstract new task sets could require from verbal rehearsal to proper maintenance (Cragg & Nation, 2010;Kompa & Mueller, 2020). More directly related, it has been shown that the instructions' procedural representations generalize across response modalities that are conceptually overlapping (Liefooghe et al, 2012).…”

Words have a weight: language as a source of inner grounding and flexibility in abstract concepts

“…Harpaintner, Trumpp, & Kiefer, 2018;Desai, Reilly, & van Dam, 2018). Second, the language system could be important to abstract concepts but only as a source of amodal cognition (Kompa & Mueller, 2020). In contrast to this possibility, the LENS theory predicts that future research will highlight the importance of grounded linguistic simulations to abstract concepts.…”

Meta-analytic evidence for a novel hierarchical model of conceptual processing

“…Several studies failed to find modality-specific perceptual-motor activity during conceptual tasks (e.g. Bedny et al, 2008; Postle et al, 2008; Raposo et al, 2009) and the involvement of modality-specific regions in conceptual processing remains controversial (Kompa, 2021; Kompa and Mueller, 2020; Mahon, 2015; Mahon and Caramazza, 2008). Second, it is unknown which modalities robustly overlap in multimodal convergence zones.…”