Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-07T21:07:00.837Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Brain and behavior: Which way does the shaping go?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2008

A. Charles Catania
A. Charles Catania
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), Baltimore, MD 21250. [email protected]://www.umbc.edu/psyc/personal/catania/catanias.html
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Evolutionary contingencies select organisms based on what they can do; brains and other evolved structures serve their behavior. Arguments that brains drive language structure get the direction wrong; with functional issues unacknowledged, interactions between central structures and periphery are overlooked. Evidence supports a peripherally driven central organization. If language modules develop like other brain compartments, then environmental consistencies can engender both structural and functional language units (e.g., the different phonemic, semantic, and grammatical structures of different languages).

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 31 , Issue 5 , October 2008 , pp. 516 - 517
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Catania, A. C. (2000) From behavior to brain and back again: Review of Orbach on Lashley-Hebb. Psycoloquy, March 18, 2000. (Online publication: psyc.00.11.027.lashley-hebb.14.catania, 890 lines.) Available at: http://www.cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/cgi/psyc/newpsy?11.027.Google Scholar
Catania, A. C. (2001) Three varieties of selection and their implications for the origins of language. In: Language evolution: Biological, linguistic and philosophical perspectives, ed. Györi, G., pp. 55–71. Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Catania, A. C. (2003a) Why behavior should matter to linguists. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 26:670–72.Google Scholar
Catania, A. C. (2003b) Verbal governance, verbal shaping, and attention to verbal stimuli. In: Behavior theory and philosophy, ed. Lattal, K. A. & Chase, P. N., pp. 301–21. Kluwer/Academic Press.Google Scholar
Catania, A. C. (2006) Antecedents and consequences of words. Analysis of Verbal Behavior 22:89–100.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Catania, K. C. & Kaas, J. H. (1997) The mole nose instructs the brain. Somatosensory and Motor Research 14:56–58.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Colapinto, J. (2007) The interpreter. The New Yorker, April 16, 2007, pp. 118–37.Google Scholar
Irvine, K. D. & Rauskolb, C. (2001) Boundaries in development: Formation and function. Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology 17:189–214.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jackendoff, R. (2003) Précis of Foundations of language: Brain, meaning, grammar, evolution. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 26:651–707.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kiecker, C. & Lumsden, A. (2005) Compartments and their boundaries in vertebrate brain development. Nature Reviews: Neuroscience 6:553–64.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pinker, S. & Bloom, P. (1990) Natural language and natural selection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13:707–27; discussion 727–84. Available at: http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/OldArchive/bbs.pinker.html.Google Scholar