Exploratory: Language & Object Individuation

[orbacht]

This was a very interesting study. I didn’t have any issues with the studies cited in this article and thought it was well-written and presented some good novel ideas. Fei Xu clearly articulated his hypothesis that infants initially use spatiotemporal information to individuate objects and that although they know about object properties they ignore that information when determining object individuation. At end of their 1st year infants start using object property and object kind information due to brain maturation and development of language, specifically labeling, may help infants pick out kinds in their environments and then they can use kind membership for object individuation.
I really loved the connection that he made between language and object individuation. This seems like a very logical connection to me. It raises an interesting argument about the relation of language and cognition. Is it that language is made to articulate cognition or that cognition itself is shaped by language? This paper points out one instance where the words we use actually define the world around us. This point is made even more clear in the Xu, 1998 study where kids are familiarized with the objects and their names and then looking times are recorded when the objects switch behind the screen. Clearly language directly effects infants’ performance on this test. I also like the idea that language is what allows humans to have such complex thoughts. I wonder how this works for people like Genie and the other wild children who have been found. Are they unable to represent complex thoughts because they never learned language? Do different cultures with different language structures represent thoughts differently?
I also really liked the whole idea of a “what” and a “where” system. I love when neuropsychology results line up with cognitive data! This supports the idea we were talking about in class the other day that people are born with innate lower level systems and it is the integration of these systems that develops with maturation and experience. What Fei Xu was saying about the pointing finger seemed similar to my file cabinet man. Another score for organizing information as it comes in being an innate ability!
In a broader sense, I am a little confused about how accurate any of these theories can be. I remember feeling this way in cognitive too. I feel like philosophy sort of starts to intrude into psychology sometimes in a way that makes me a little nervous. I know that the brain is very difficult to get at from a research perspective but sometimes it seems that there is so little definite knowledge that the information we do have can be used to prove or disprove basically any theory. Just something to keep in mind. I am also a little confused about the purpose of over-arching articles like this. Didn’t the individual authors come to similar conclusions in their papers?
In conclusion, this was an interesting paper that made some pretty sweet connections. I would be really interested to see more studies relating the development of language to cognitive functioning across cultures and socio-economic status.

[derek]

Nice job, Tessa. I'm super excited to discuss this article -- I think it's my favorite one of the readings so far. In particular, the issues you raise about the connection between language and thought are very intriguing ones...

Oh right, and P.S., Fei Xu is a "she".