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Experience‐Dependent Brain Development as a Key to Understanding the Language System
Author(s) -
Westermann Gert
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
topics in cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.191
H-Index - 56
eISSN - 1756-8765
pISSN - 1756-8757
DOI - 10.1111/tops.12194
Subject(s) - lexicon , computer science , cognitive science , embodied cognition , connectionism , context (archaeology) , language development , associative property , representation (politics) , set (abstract data type) , universal networking language , language acquisition , artificial intelligence , comprehension approach , natural language , natural language processing , psychology , artificial neural network , paleontology , developmental psychology , mathematics education , mathematics , politics , political science , pure mathematics , law , biology , programming language
An influential view of the nature of the language system is that of an evolved biological system in which a set of rules is combined with a lexicon that contains the words of the language together with a representation of their context. Alternative views, usually based on connectionist modeling, attempt to explain the structure of language on the basis of complex associative processes. Here, I put forward a third view that stresses experience‐dependent structural development of the brain circuits supporting language as a core principle of the organization of the language system. In this view, embodied in a recent neuroconstructivist neural network of past tense development and processing, initial domain‐general predispositions enable the development of functionally specialized brain structures through interactions between experience‐dependent brain development and statistical learning in a structured environment. Together, these processes shape a biological adult language system that appears to separate into distinct mechanism for processing rules and exceptions, whereas in reality those subsystems co‐develop and interact closely. This view puts experience‐dependent brain development in response to a specific language environment at the heart of understanding not only language development but adult language processing as well.