Sign and Speech Share Partially Overlapping Conceptual Representations.

ABSTRACT: Conceptual knowledge is fundamental to human cognition. Yet, the extent to which it is influenced by language is unclear. Studies of semantic processing show that similar neural patterns are evoked by the same concepts presented in different modalities (e.g., spoken words and pictures or text) [1-3]. This suggests that conceptual representations are "modality independent." However, an alternative possibility is that the similarity reflects retrieval of common spoken language representations. Indeed, in hearing spoken language users, text and spoken language are co-dependent [4, 5], and pictures are encoded via visual and verbal routes [6]. A parallel approach investigating semantic cognition shows that bilinguals activate similar patterns for the same words in their different languages [7,

SUBMITTER: Evans S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6839399 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature