Investigating the dynamics of language processes with inferential naming
Raphaël Fargier
[https://sites.google.com/site/raphaelfargierpage/->https://sites.google.com/site/raphaelfargierpage/]
{Department of Special Needs Education
Oslo Special Education and Learning Lab, University of Oslo, Norway}
Language, in particular how people connect words with meaning, is an optimal object of inquiry for cognitive science. In this talk, I will demonstrate how language production, in fact inferential naming, can be used to better understand the lexical-semantic representations activated during speaking, and the cognitive processes that allow people to retrieve and use these representations to convey meaning. First, I will describe the brain and cognitive operations that lead to lexical selection, with high-density electroencephalography. Second, I will use inferential naming to provide new perspectives on the challenging issue of abstract words processing. Third, I will adopt a lifespan perspective to suggest that aging is not necessarily associated with decline in language and cognitive abilities but likely with qualitative changes at the levels of processes and representations.
I will argue that unraveling the dynamics of language processes at multiple scales, in learning (from unknown to meaningful words), in aging (from childhood to elderly) and in speaking (from ideas to sounds) is the key to better model the neurocognitive architecture of language.
