Current Directions in Psychological Science - April 2008 - In Press http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/cd/17_2_inpress/Barsalou_completed.pdf
THE DOMINANT THEORY IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE Across diverse areas of psychology, computer science, linguistics, and philosophy, the dominant account of the conceptual system is the theory of semantic memory (e.g., Smith, 1978). According to this theory, the conceptual system is a modular memory store that contains amodal knowledge about categories. Semantic memory is viewed as modular because it is assumed to be separate from the brain's episodic-memory system and also from the brain's modal systems for perception, action, and affect. Because semantic memory lies outside modal systems, its representations are viewed as different from theirs, providing a higher, amodal level of representation. The transduction principle underlies the view that amodal representations develop for categories in a modular conceptual system THE DOMINANT THEORY IN COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE A very different view of the conceptual system has arisen in cognitive neuroscience. According to this view, categorical knowledge is grounded in the brain's modal systems, rather than being represented amodally in a modular semantic memory (e.g., Martin, 2001). For example, knowledge about dogs is represented in visual representations of how dogs look, in auditory representations of how dogs sound, and in motor representations of how to interact with dogs. Because the representational systems that underlie perception, action, and affect are also used to represent categorical knowledge, the conceptual system is neither modular nor amodal. Instead, perception and conception share overlapping systems. Empirical evidence has been the driving force behind this view. ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
