FOS: Fw: [cogsci] Tonight @ 6:30 | Morten Christiansen | Cognitive Science Distinguished Speaker | 118 Psychology

[Wagner, Suzanne]

________________________________
From: cogsci-request at cogsci.msu.edu <cogsci-request at cogsci.msu.edu> on behalf of J. Devin McAuley <dmcauley.msu at gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, April 15, 2019 10:35 AM
To: cogsci at cogsci.msu.edu; psyfaculty at psy.msu.edu; psygrads at psy.msu.edu; coggrads at cogsci.msu.edu; cogugrads at cogsci.msu.edu
Subject: [cogsci] Tonight @ 6:30 | Morten Christiansen | Cognitive Science Distinguished Speaker | 118 Psychology

Dear Colleagues:

A reminder that Professor Morten Christiansen from Cornell University will be speaking tonight, Monday, April 15th, as part of the 2018-2019 Cognitive Science Program Distinguished Speaker Series.  The talk is at 6:30 (please note different time) in 118 Psychology with a reception at 6. The title and abstract for the talk are below.

Hope to see you tonight!

Best,
Devin

Language evolution through the bottleneck: From milliseconds to millennia
Dr. Morten Christiansen, Cornell University

Monday, April 15 at 6:30 p.m., 118 Psychology

Abstract

Over the past few decades, the language sciences have seen a shift toward explaining language evolution in terms of cultural evolution rather than biological adaptation. This work has demonstrated how various nonlinguistic biases amplified by cultural transmission across generations, along with pressures from interactions between individuals within each generation, may help explain many facets of linguistic structure observable in today’s languages. In this talk, I discuss the possible contribution to language evolution of a fundamental constraint on processing, the Now-or-Never bottleneck: during normal linguistic interaction, we are faced with an immense challenge by the combined effects of rapid input, short-lived sensory memory, and severely limited sequence memory. To overcome the Now-or-Never bottleneck, language users must learn to compress and recode language input as rapidly as possible into increasingly more abstract levels of linguistic representation. This perspective has profound implications for the nature of language processing, acquisition, and evolution. To illustrate, I present results from a lab-based cultural evolution experiment and psycholinguistic experimentation. Together, these studies suggest that cultural evolution, as constrained by basic chunk-based learning and processing mechanisms, has promoted the emergence of structure in language that helps alleviate the challenge posed by the Now-or-Never bottleneck.

J. Devin McAuley, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology
Director, Interdisciplinary Cognitive Science Program
316 Physics Rd, Rm 282B
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
Email: dmcauley at msu.edu<mailto:dmcauley at msu.edu>
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