Embodied Cognition

I just returned from the AAAS 2009 Annual Meeting in Chicago, where I organized and chaired a symposium called "Embodied Cognition: Brains, Mouths, and Hands." There were three great presentations. David Poeppel, New York University, "A Brain's Eye View on Language: Neurobiological Foundations of Comprehension"; Louis Goldstein, University of Southern California and Haskins Laboratories, "An Embodied Theory of Syllabic Organization of Speech"; and Susan Goldin-Meadow, University of Chicago, "Using our Bodies to Change Our Minds". See the AAAS News report, "Early Gestures Can Build A Preschooler's Vocabulary" for more information on the work of Meredith Rowe and Susan Goldin-Meadow, which also appears in a report in the February 13 issue of Science.

Kluge

Keep an eye out for the new book by Gary Marcus. It is called Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind, and is scheduled to be released in April 2008. Gary is a professor of psychology at New York University and the Director of the NYU Infant Language Learning Center.

Gary has sent a URL for the upcoming book (http://klugethebook.com/) on which he says: "It's a reader's guide to the kluge that is the human mind: the frailties and foibles of the human brain -- and how they evolved." Check it out.

What the F***?

Steven Pinker, the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, has an article called "What the F***? Why we curse" in the Oct. 8, 2007 issue of The New Republic (pp. 24-29). This article is adapted from his new book, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, which was reviewed on Sep. 23, 2007 by William Saletan in an article called "The Double Thinker" in The New York Times Book Review, and on Sep. 27, 2007 by Colin McGinn in an article called "How You Think" in The New York Review of Books.