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This volume comprises contributions from different disciplines (cognitive psychology, linguistics, computer science, neuroscience) concerned with the generation of natural speech. It summarizes the outcome of a six-year long priority program funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) that aimed at bringing together colleagues with different viewpoints but sharing a principal interest in the cognitive processes underlying language production. The result is a state-of-the-art discussion of one of the most fascinating branches of human behavior taking into account a particularly rich multidisciplinary empirical data base.
This comprehensive project has the objective of describing and assessing pronunciation talent with special focus on its psychological and neural correlates. The first part of this undertaking describes the extensive tests necessary to measure phonetic talent in its various dimensions, such as production and perception, the segmental and suprasegmental levels of speech, and different utterance forms such as spontaneous speech, reading and imitation. Subjects are examined in their native language (German), a familiar second language (English) and, to a lesser degree, an unfamiliar language (Hindi). The project also investigates psychological and behavioral influences such as empathy or motivat...
When we think about expertise, we usually consider people who master tasks at a level not reachable by most other people. Although we rarely realise it, however, most humans are experts in many aspects of everyday life. This expertise enables us to find our way through a complex environment that is our life. For instance, we can instantly recognise multiple objects and relations between them to form a meaningful unit, such as an office. Thus, research on expertise is not only important to investigate the cognitive and neural processes within an “elite” group, but it is also a powerful tool to understand how everyone can acquire complex skills. The goal of this Research Topic is to shed f...
The first systematic collaboration between cognitive scientists and sports psychologists considers the mind–body relationship from the perspective of athletic skill and sports practice. This landmark work is the first systematic collaboration between cognitive scientists and sports psychologists that considers the mind–body relationship from the perspective of athletic skill and sports practice. With twenty-six chapters by leading researchers, the book connects and integrates findings from fields that range from philosophy of mind to sociology of sports. The chapters show not only that sports can tell scientists how the human mind works but also that the scientific study of the human min...
A provocative new account of how morality evolved What is morality? Where does it come from? And why do most of us heed its call most of the time? In Braintrust, neurophilosophy pioneer Patricia Churchland argues that morality originates in the biology of the brain. She describes the "neurobiological platform of bonding" that, modified by evolutionary pressures and cultural values, has led to human styles of moral behavior. The result is a provocative genealogy of morals that asks us to reevaluate the priority given to religion, absolute rules, and pure reason in accounting for the basis of morality. Moral values, Churchland argues, are rooted in a behavior common to all mammals—the caring...
Scholars from many different disciplines examine consciousness through the lens of intellectual approaches and cultures ranging from cosmology research and cell biophysics laboratories to pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and Tibetan Tantric Buddhism in a volume that extends consciousness studies beyond the limits of current neuroscience research. The "hard problem" of today's consciousness studies is subjective experience: understanding why some brain processing is accompanied by an experienced inner life. Recent scientific advances offer insights for understanding the physiological and chemical phenomenology of consciousness. But by leaving aside the internal experiential nature of consciousness i...
This handbook presents a series of essays that captures not the past of criminology, but where theoretical explanation is headed. The volume is replete with ideas, discussions of substantive topics with salient theoretical implications, and reviews of literatures that illuminate avenues along which theory and research evolve.
Prosody as a system of suprasegmental linguistic information such as rhythm and intonation is a prime candidate for looking at the relation between language and music in a principled way. This claim is based on several aspects: First, prosody is concerned with acoustic correlates of language and music that are directly comparable with each other by their physical properties such as duration and pitch. Second, prosodic accounts suggest a hierarchical organization of prosodic units that not only resembles a syntactic hierarchy, but is viewed as (part of) an interface to syntax. Third, prosody provides a very promising ground for evolutionary accounts of language and music. Fourth, bilateral tr...
Xenolinguistics brings together biologists, anthropologists, linguists, and other experts specializing in language and communication to explore what non-human, non-Earthbound language might look like. The 18 chapters examine what is known about human language and animal communication systems to provide reasonable hypotheses about what we may find if we encounter non-Earth intelligence. Showcasing an interdisciplinary dialogue between a set of highly established scholars, this volume: Clarifies what is and is not known about human language and animal communication systems Presents speculative arguments as a philosophical exercise to help define the boundaries of what our current science can t...
'Seeing' happens effortlessly and yet is endlessly complex. One of the most fascinating aspects of visual perception is its stability and constancy. As we shift our gaze or move about the world, the light projected onto the retinas is constantly changing. Yet the surrounding objects appear stable in their properties. Psychologists have long been interested in constancies, exploring questions such as: How good is constancy? Is constancy a fact about how things look, or is it a product of our beliefs and judgments about how things look? How can the contents of visual experience be studied experimentally? However, philosophers have long been interested in characterizing visual experience and ha...