More than a scaffold: Language is a neuroenhancement

Abstract

What role does language play in our thoughts? A longstanding proposal that has gained traction among supporters of embodied or grounded cognition suggests that it serves as a cognitive scaffold. This idea turns on the fact that language—with its ability to capture statistical regularities, leverage culturally acquired information, and engage grounded metaphors—is an effective and readily available support for our thinking. In this essay, I argue that language should be viewed as more than this; it should be viewed as a neuroenhancement. The neurologically realized language system is an important subcomponent of a flexible, multimodal, and multilevel conceptual system. It is not merely a source for information about the world but also a computational add-on that extends our conceptual reach. This approach provides a compelling explanation of the course of development, our facility with abstract concepts, and even the scope of language-specific influences on cognition.

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More than a scaffold: Language is a
neuroenhancement
Guy Dove
To cite this article: Guy Dove (2019): More than a scaffold: Language is a neuroenhancement,
Cognitive Neuropsychology, DOI: 10.1080/02643294.2019.1637338
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More than a scaffold: Language is a neuroenhancement
Guy Dove
Department of Philosophy, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA
ABSTRACT
What role does language play in our thoughts? A longstanding proposal that has gained traction
among supporters of embodied or grounded cognition suggests that it serves as a cognitive
scaffold. This idea turns on the fact that language—with its ability to capture statistical
regularities, leverage culturally acquired information, and engage grounded metaphors—is an
effective and readily available support for our thinking. In this essay, I argue that language
should be viewed as more than this; it should be viewed as a neuroenhancement. The
neurologically realized language system is an important subcomponent of a flexible, multimodal,
and multilevel conceptual system. It is not merely a source for information about the world but
also a computational add-on that extends our conceptual reach. This approach provides a
compelling explanation of the course of development, our facility with abstract concepts, and
even the scope of language-specificinfluences on cognition.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 10 March 2019
Revised 2 June 2019
Accepted 25 June 2019
KEYWORDS
Cognition; concepts;
embodied; language;
semantic memory
1. Introduction
A growing body of evidence suggests that our con-
cepts are at least partially grounded in action,
emotion, and perception systems (Barsalou, 2008;
Fischer & Zwaan, 2008; Gallese & Lakoff,2005; Kem-
merer, 2010; Kiefer & Pulvermüller, 2012). This evi-
dence suggests that the neural representations
employed in thinking about the world often involve
those that are responsible for experiencing it. Theories
of embodied cognition often propose that we employ
simulations of aspects of experience to handle con-
ceptual reasoning. At a minimum such theories rely
on a notion of neural reuse whereby modality-
specific representations are selectively engaged in
cognitive tasks.
This embodied perspective raises a difficult ques-
tion: What is the role that the language system itself
plays in our concepts? In this essay, I propose that rep-
resentations indigenous to the language system are
central components of our concepts. In other words,
I contend that there are good reasons to suppose
that language-specific representations play an impor-
tant role in our concepts. To some degree, this
shouldn’t be surprising. For example, the idea that a
word’s meaning might be encoded in part by the
associations that it has with other words—i.e., the
company that it keeps (Firth, 1957)—is a familiar
one. Indeed, this idea has enjoyed a recent resurgence
with the success of so-called distributional models of
semantic processing (Blei, Ng, & Jordan, 2003; Land-
auer & Dumais, 1997; Landauer, Foltz, & Laham,
1998; Lund & Burgess, 1996). Despite this familiarity
and recent empirical success, it has not been part of
the mainstream for quite some time—with either
standard amodal theories (which are not committed
to embodiment or grounded representations) or
embodied/grounded theories.
Standard disembodied or amodal theories have
tended to posit independent semantic represen-
tations as part of a general conception of cognition
that Susan Hurley (2008) colorfully characterizes as
the “classical sandwich”. The classical sandwich meta-
phor treats cognition as the meat that sits between
two slices of bread (action and perception). The rep-
resentations employed by this autonomous concep-
tual system are independent of those employed by
action and perception systems. Generally, language
is treated as a medium by which information is trans-
duced to and from our conceptual system.
Although embodied/grounded theories are defined
by their fierce opposition to the standard amodal
approach and the classical sandwich, most have
adopted a similar position with respect to language—
that is, they have tended to treat words, phrases, and
© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
CONTACT Guy Dove guy.dove@louisville.edu
COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY
https://doi.org/10.1080/02643294.2019.1637338

sentences as merely the means by which situated simu-
lations of nonlinguistic experience are engaged (Barsa-
lou, 2016; Zwaan, 2016). Despite this orthodoxy, there
are clear ways in which the separation of the language
system from the conceptual system fits poorly with the
notion of embodied or grounded cognition. Language
itself is something we experience in an embodied and
grounded way (Borghi & Binkofski, 2014; Dove, 2014,
2018). If the reuse of experiential resources is important
to conceptual processing, then why wouldn’t this
include reuse of representations associated with lin-
guistic experience? Certainly, we gather a great deal
of what we know about the world through the activities
of talking, listening, writing, reading etc. It seems
reasonable to suppose that some of the represen-
tations that are automatically engaged in conceptual
tasks are experiential representations associated with
the processing of language. At least, that is the position
I am going to explore and defend in this essay.
2. The neuroenhancement view
I am not alone in questioning the orthodoxy. A
number of researchers have recently proposed that
the language system, or at least our experience of
language, plays a significant role in our grounded con-
ceptual system. Examples of specific theories that
embrace this sort of inclusiveness include ECCo
theory (Embodied Conceptual Combination; Lynott &
Connell, 2010), LASS theory (Language and Situated
Simulation; Barsalou, Santos, Simmons, & Wilson,
2008), LASSO theory (Language and Associations in
thinking; Tillas, 2015), SI theory (Symbol Interdepen-
dency; Louwerse, 2011,2018; Louwerse & Jeuniaux,
2010), and WAT theory (Word As social Tool; Borghi
& Cimatti, 2009). These theories differ with respect to
the degree to which they think language contributes
to cognition. At one end of this spectrum are theories
that view language as merely a scaffold for our con-
cepts (Vygotsky, [1934] 2012). The LASS theory, for
example, treats language as little more than a cogni-
tive shortcut for embodied or grounded conceptual
processing. At the other end are theories that give
language a central role language in our concepts.
The SI approach (Louwerse, 2011,2018) holds that lin-
guistic information plays a dominant role in concep-
tual processing. The WAT theory (Borghi & Binkofski,
2014; Borghi et al., 2018) emphasizes that words
serve as social and cognitive tools. Other theories lie
in the middle somewhere. For instance, Connell
(2018) embraces the notion of a linguistic shortcut
but goes on to emphasize the importance of this
shortcut in both online and offline conceptual proces-
sing. Indeed, this allows “language to be an integral
part of the conceptual system”(Connell, 2018,p.1;
see also Connell & Lynott, 2014).
The purpose of this essay is to offer a full-throated
view of the contribution that language makes to cog-
nition that encompasses many of the elements of the
theories mentioned above. The core idea is that sym-
bolic properties of language underwrite novel concep-
tual abilities. Roughly put, I propose that the language
system is something of a neuroenhancement. When
we acquire a natural language, we acquire a symbol
technology that enhances the nature our cognition
is specific ways. The language system is a useful
piece of neural/cognitive machinery that extends our
conceptual reach by enabling us to formulate
thoughts that we would struggle to formulate other-
wise. Borrowing a turn of phrase from the philosopher
Andy Clark (2003), we are linguistic cyborgs. Within
the brain sciences, neuroenhancements are typically
thought of as chemical agents that we ingest or inor-
ganic technologies with which we become enmeshed.
Clearly, language is neither of these in any straightfor-
ward sense. I am calling it a neuroenhancement,
however, because the language system itself
becomes an important component of the conceptual
system rather than merely a novel source of infor-
mation about the world. Thinking of the process of
language acquisition as one of a neural modification
is not a profound conceptual leap. Of course, all learn-
ing can be thought of broadly in these terms. The pro-
posal on the table suggests that the case with
language is special because the neurological realized
language system is entwined and integrated with
other aspects of the conceptual system. Language,
in other words, is deeply generatively entrenched
(Wimsatt, 2007). To be more specific, it becomes a
modality for perceiving and acting on the world. As
such, the language system itself is a target for
grounded neural simulation or neural reuse.
This approach fosters predictions concerning how
our concepts are neurologically realized that go
beyond the usual conception of scaffolding as a
means of external support for constructive processes
(Buckner, 2018). In keeping with the tradition of pro-
viding an acronym, I am going to refer to this as the
2G. DOVE

LENS theory (Language as an Embodied Neuroen-
hancement and Scaffold theory). Broadly speaking,
theories of embodied cognition can be divided into
two major camps: those that emphasize the
influence of the body on the mind and those that
emphasize the importance of body-world couplings.
Viewing language as an external symbol technology
that becomes an integrated part of the neurologically
realized conceptual system bridges these conceptions.
The core idea is that the acquisition of language trans-
forms the cognitive lives of children by offering a new
symbolic medium for thinking that has many of the
favorable properties identified by supporters of
amodal cognition (Dove, 2011,2014,2018). This new
symbolic medium is grounded in sensorimotor
systems. We would thus expect these systems to con-
tribute in a causally relevant way to semantic
processing.
It is helpful to begin with the reasons why we
should think that language can act as a scaffold. A
minimalist proposal can be found in LASS theory.
The suggestion here is that linguistic information
stored within concepts can serve as a cognitive short-
cut with certain tasks. In other words, language under-
writes a superficial form of semantic processing that
enables us to avoid the deeper processing associated
with situated simulations. On this proposal, language
is merely a scaffold in the sense that it provides an
occasional and somewhat reliable substitute for
grounded cognition. It is little more than an efficient
shortcut. Most conceptions of scaffolding go a bit
farther beyond this minimal notion. Some follow
Vygotsky and emphasize the degree to which
language provides an efficient medium for communi-
cating generic information in a human pedagogical
context (Csibra & Gergely, 2009; Pezzulo, Barca, &
D’Ausilio, 2014). Others focus on the extent to which
words can leverage socially mediated experiences
(Borghi & Binkofski, 2014; Borghi & Cimatti, 2009).
The LENS theory goes even further. Acquiring
language involves the development of sophisticated
sensorimotor skills that involve the coordination of
multiple modalities. In the course of acquiring these
skills, children acquire the ability to manipulate an
independent combinatorial symbol system. Linguists
and psycholinguists investigate the structural proper-
ties of this system at the phonological, morphological,
syntactic, semantic, and discourse levels. This descrip-
tion of the language system is meant to be broad and
is intended to leave room for intermediate levels such
as morphosyntax, systems that encompass multiple
levels such the mental lexicon, and even phenomena
that go beyond them such as social factors. Although
the LENS theory is committed to the grounded nature
of the neuromechanisms responsible for handling
language, it remains neutral with respect to many of
the specific details concerning the nature of the
language system. It is a theory of the role played by
language in our concepts, not of language itself.
3. An acquired symbol technology
Recently, Cecilia Heyes (2018) has proposed that a
great deal of the distinctiveness of human behavior
and cognition is shaped by our facility with culturally
derived neuromechanisms that she refers to as cogni-
tive gadgets. Language is one of her primary examples.
Clearly, the LENS theory shares much with this
approach, but it adds specific claims about the
nature of cognition, the structure of our conceptual
system, and the specific role played by the neurologi-
cally realized language system. To put it simply, it pro-
vides a specific picture of what kind of
cognitive gadget a natural language amounts to. The
proposal on the table is that language is first and fore-
most a symbol technology. In one sense, it is just one
of a number of externally sourced symbol technol-
ogies that we are able acquire (Clark, 2011). Our under-
standing of mathematics, for instance, often depends
on such technologies. To give a prosaic example,
learning how to perform long division on paper
requires a similar grounded manipulation of, and
interaction with, physical symbols (Landy, Allen, &
Zednik, 2014; Landy & Goldstone, 2007). In keeping
with this example, language is just another external
symbol system that we learn to manipulate in an
embodied and grounded way. In another sense,
language is clearly special. It is hard to think of a cog-
nitive domain that does not involve language to some
degree or another.
What makes it a neuroenhancement, though? To
answer this, it will help to consider an example that
Clark and Chalmers (1998) outline in the course of
their defense of extended cognition.
1
Clark and Chal-
mers note that expert players of Tetris often flip the
target block physically on the screen by pushing the
relevant button as it drops. Presumably, this helps
them with the task of finding out where to place the
COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY 3

block because it is more efficient than mentally rotat-
ing the block (the technique employed by less experi-
enced players). Clark and Calmers go on to claim that,
because the physical and mental rotations are func-
tionally equivalent from a certain computational
standpoint, they should both be treated as cognitive.
To make this claim stick, they point to an imagined
neuroenhancement example (1998, p. 7):
Sometime in the cyberpunk future, a person sits in front
of a similar computer screen. This agent, however, has
the benefit of a neural implant which can perform the
rotation operation as fast as the computer in the pre-
vious example. The agent must still choose which
internal resource to use (the implant or the good old
fashioned mental rotation), as each resource makes
different demands on attention and other concurrent
brain activity.
Without getting into the nitty-gritty details of their
argument, Clark and Chalmers are interested in
driving home two points: The first is that a great
deal of our intelligent behavior relies on external
support. More specifically, it may involve epistemic
actions (Kirsh & Maglio, 1994) that involve a coupled
interaction with the world. The second is that certain
instances of such actions should count as forms of
extended cognition. The cyberpunk example in par-
ticular is meant to demonstrate that the skin-and-
skull barrier is irrelevant. The key part of the thought
experiment is that not much has changed computa-
tionally by the internalization of the actions of
expert Tetris players.
The philosophical implications of this case—par-
ticularly the degree to which it supports the existence
of extended minds that include parts of the world
among their constituents—have been discussed at
great length elsewhere (e.g., Menary, 2010) and are
beyond the purview of this essay. Indeed, they are
orthogonal to the issues currently at hand. Neverthe-
less, I suggest that this example provides a useful
means of exploring the theoretical claims of LENS
theory.
2
While it seems reasonable to say that there
could be no computational differences between how
the cyberpunk and the Tetris expert handle this par-
ticular task (and it is worth noting that Clark and Chal-
mers are careful to align the behavioral features of the
compared cases), there is an obvious sense in which
the cyberpunk is enhanced in a way that the expert
is not. For one, the cyperpunk might well find other
uses for their newly acquired mental rotation abilities.
It seems likely that the new mechanism will be co-
opted to serve new cognitive functions in a way that
the circumscribed behaviorally mediated expertise
will not be. In other words, having internal access to
a new perceptual/cognitive mechanism is likely to
transform their cognitive horizons.
The suggestion on offer with LENS theory is that the
widely distributed and multimodal language system
amounts to a neurologically realized modification—
one that supports new forms of intelligent behavior.
This is what it means to say that the language
system itself acts as a neuroenhancement. This view
begins the observation that children develop highly
distributed sensorimotor skills in the course of lever-
aging a valuable social resource. Communicating
through language—even at the most rudimentary
level—enables them to act on the world and gather
information about it in a powerful and effective way.
At a minimum, language provides a highly effective
channel of cultural transmission. In the course of
becoming fluent, however, the child learns how to
manipulate grounded symbols in a systematic and
productive fashion that enhances cognition by
means of providing a distinctly effective medium of
thought. In this sense, an acquired natural language
becomes an embodied neuroenhancement. Borrow-
ing from Clark and Chalmers, we might explain the
central idea as follows: During the course of develop-
ment, the child goes from being more like the expert
tetris player (who manipulates their cognitive niche
for cognitive purposes) to being more like the cyber-
punk (who has access to an internal cognitive
system). The analogy is not perfect because the
LENS theory holds that language plays both the exter-
nal role associated with epistemic actions and the
internal role associated with neural enhancement.
A caveat is warranted. Viewing language as a neu-
roenhancement is inherently constructivist. The sug-
gestion is, after all, that the human conceptual
system is significantly altered and transformed
through the dynamic and sustained interaction with
others through the medium of a natural language.
Although it is intended to be compatible with recent
theories of powerful general-purpose learning mech-
anisms and likely requires the rejection of nativist con-
ceptions of the acquisition process that posit a rich
genetically determined language faculty,
3
it would
be a mistake to think that it excludes the influence
of evolutionary forces. For one, there are approaches
4G. DOVE

to evolution that emphasize the relevance of develop-
mental and environmental influences, including evo-
devo theories (West-Eberhard, 2005) and what has
been called the extended evolutionary synthesis
(Laland et al., 2015). For another, it has been
suggested that the human brain and language
might have co-evolved in such a way that the
former may shaped an appropriate socio-cultural
niche and the latter may have shaped an appropriate
neural niche (Deacon, 1997). Third, alternative devel-
opmental explanations have been offered for the fea-
tures of language acquisition that are often taken as
evidence for a genetic endowment for language
(Christiansen & Chater, 2016; Culicover, 1999; Dove,
2012). Thus, while LENS requires constructivism, it
also leaves room for evolutionary factors.
The central idea behind the LENS theory is that,
when an individual acquires a natural language, they
acquire a symbol system that has different compu-
tational properties than the embodied codes that
exist independently of language (Clark, 2006,2011).
In other words, the distributed and grounded
language system becomes an acquired neural
enhancement that transforms a child’s ability, not
only to leverage their external and social environment,
but also to formulate thoughts about the world and
our place in it. Conceptual content can then be cap-
tured in part by the associative or inferential relation-
ships of embodied linguistic representations with
other embodied linguistic representations (Borghi &
Cimatti, 2009; Dove, 2011). A concept will not only
be represented on a given occasion by multimodal
simulations associated with interacting with its refer-
ents, but also by multimodal simulations or action
schemas associated with talking or listening to talk
about them—that is, sensorimotor experiences of
words, phrases, sentences, and perhaps even larger
chunks of discourse.
4. Thinking without words
In cognitive science, theoretical positions concerning
the role of language in our thoughts have traditionally
been polemical: they have tended to treat language
either as having almost no direct influence on our con-
ceptual system, serving primarily as a means gaining
access to culturally derived information, or as having
almost magical powers such as underwriting our
capacity for abstract thought. To put it somewhat
differently, theories have tended to favor either a com-
municative or a cognitive conception of the role of
language in thought. Recently, though, researchers
have begun to recognize that language can be an
effective tool for thinking, even if it is not the only
one in the toolbox.
A straightforward consequence of treating
language as a neuroenhancement and a scaffold is
the prediction that thinking can occur in the
absence of language. For various practical reasons,
most research on grounded cognition has focused
on language-based semantic memory in adults.
4
Lin-
guistic stimuli are certainly convenient and handy
prompts for this work. Words, after all, demarcate
shared concepts. Furthermore, it is genuinely surpris-
ing to find that affective and sensorimotor systems
contribute to semantic tasks. Nevertheless, the ideas
at the heart of grounded cognition clearly suggest
that thought without language is possible. Unfortu-
nately, given the de facto focus on linguistically
encoded concepts, there has been little effort to disen-
tangle the contribution of language to the conceptual
system.
There are a number of reasons to favor the idea that
thinking can occur without words (Pinker, 1994). For
one, there is the question of how infants and young
children are able to acquire concepts that are
encoded in a particular natural language. Fodor
(1981) famously emphasized that the capacity to
learn word meanings seems to require the prior
ability to formulate hypotheses about what the
words might mean. Whether or not one accepts his
background assumptions concerning the nature of
learning, the general point that acquiring word mean-
ings seems to require the presence of sophisticated
conceptual abilities seems sound.
Perhaps the most famous neuropsychology case
study relating to independence of language and
thought involves a French Canadian monk known as
“Brother John”(Lecours & Joanette, 1980). Brother
John was an educated man who served on the edi-
torial staffof the periodical put out by his order. He
was epileptic and during his seizures experienced
what Lecours and Joanette (1980, pp. 4–5) refer as
“spells”of paroxysmal aphasia where he would
remain conscious but lose all productive and receptive
language skills, including inner speech. These spells
tended to be either relatively short (1–5 min) or rela-
tively long (1–11 h). During these spells, Brother
COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY 5

John was able to function remarkably well. For
example, he was able to recognize objects, use tools,
navigate familiar and novel environments, and even
manage social interactions. Famously, one of Brother
John’s long spells occurred as he was traveling by
train from Italy to a small town in Switzerland. As he
arrived in the small town he began to experience a
long spell of dysphasia. Despite having never been
to that town before, he managed to get his bags, dis-
embark from the train, find a hotel, check in by means
of handing over his passport, and order a meal by
pointing to the menu.
5
Without question, there are
many reasons to be cautious with respect to
drawing firm conclusions from this remarkable case
study. Given the inherent limitations of this sort of
anecdotal report, we should treat it as suggestive at
best.
There are other strands of evidence, though. Natu-
rally occurring linguistic isolates provide further
support for the potential independence of thought
from language. Dramatic instances of children raised
in isolation from other people—such as the cases of
Genie (Curtiss, 1977) and Victor of Aveyron (Lane,
1976)—capture the imagination, but far too much
remains unresolved concerning the details of their
upbringing and the nature of their deficits. However,
less dramatic cases are available. Donald (1993)
points to documented instances of deaf people from
pre-literate societies. Despite their lack of exposure to
formal writing systems or fully realized sign language,
there seems to be little reason to suspect that such indi-
viduals were incapable of some forms of sophisticated
cognition. Indeed, adults without language may not be
as uncommon in the real world as they seem to be in
the research literature. Schaller (2012) relays her experi-
ence teaching sign language to Ildefonso, a profoundly
deaf 27 year-old Mexican immigrant. When they met,
Ildefonso was not only unable sign but appeared to
be completely unaware of how sign language func-
tions. Despite this, he worked as a farmhand for much
of his life. Echoing Brother John’s story, Ildefonso
recounts how, as a boy, he was sent on plane trip by
his father to pick apples with a group of men in
upstate New York. When he got there, the men were
arrested but he was not. Somehow, he was able to
find and join another group of workers (Schaller,
2012, pp. 200–201).
Two caveats are warranted with respect to Ildefon-
so’s case. The first is that, although Schaller describes
Ildefonso as obviously intelligent, she did not carry
out careful studies of his cognitive abilities. The
second is that it is not absolutely clear that Ildefonso
was completely languageless. A number of studies
have uncovered the systematic qualities of the gestural
communications of deaf children with their nonsigning
hearing parents (Goldin-Meadow & Feldman, 1977;
Goldin-Meadow & Mylander, 1998; Goldin-Meadow,
Mylander, & Butcher, 1995). It thus remains possible
that Ildefonso acquired some language or language-
like representational abilities at some point in his life.
Having made these caveats, though, it seems fair to
say that prior to acquiring ASL Ildefonso’s cognitive
abilities manifestly outpaced his linguistic ones.
Careful studies of neurological patients—and corre-
sponding brain imaging research with neurotypical
participants—provide support for the idea that
specific cognitive skills are independent of language.
The apparent independence of some aspects of math-
ematical reasoning from language provides an intri-
guing example. A study of three profoundly aphasic
patients found that they were able to solve mathemat-
ical problems that involved recursion and structure-
dependent operations (Varley, Klessinger, Roma-
nowski, & Siegal, 2005; see also Rossor, Warrington,
& Cipolotti, 1995). This study fits with brain imaging
evidence supporting the existence of a neurological
dissociation between language and mathematical
processing (Monti, Parsons, & Osherson, 2012). Never-
theless, the preservation of these skills in such patients
remains somewhat surprising because some research
indicates a correlation and possible neuroanatomical
overlap between linguistic and mathematical proces-
sing on certain tasks (Baldo & Dronkers, 2007;
although see Fedorenko & Varley, 2016 for a critical
review of this evidence).
Admittedly, in clinical contexts, the relationship
between apahasia and calculation difficulties, often
referred to as acalculia, can be somewhat complex.
Comorbidity is common but not universal (Fedorenko
& Varley, 2016; Rosselli & Ardila, 1989). Some research-
ers distinguish primary forms of acalculia that involve
a fundamental deficit in calculation abilities from sec-
ondary forms that result from other deficits including
but not limited to deficits associate with linguistic pro-
cessing (Ardila & Rosselli, 2002). However, it is often
difficult to distinguish primary from secondary forms
(Ardila & Rosselli, 2002). Significantly, there is a recog-
nized type of acalculia that occurs with right
6G. DOVE

hemisphere damage (Grana, Hofer, & Semenza, 2006).
While this type has traditioanally been categorized as
secondary form of acalulia (one that is caused by
impaired spatial processing abilities), recent evidence
from a number of sources suggests that right hemi-
sphere damage can be associated with impairments
of core calculation abilities that are independent of
spatial processing (Benavides-Varela et al., 2017).
This leads to a distributed view of the calculation
system in which right hemisphere structures play a
primary rather than a secondary role (Semenza &
Benavides-Varela, 2017).
The example of mathematical calculation is com-
pelling because it provides a clear instance of an unde-
niably higher-level cognitive skill (one that seems
clearly linked to human intelligence) that appears to
rely at least in part on neural mechanisms that are
not directly tied to the language system. This
example is also useful precisely because there are
many reasons to think that mathematical reasoning
is enhanced—both in a synchronic and a diachronic
sense—by natural language and other external
symbol systems. No one would argue that all math-
ematical reasoning is independent of language or
that the acquisition of mathematical reasoning does
not rely heavily on language. Indeed, a great deal of
research suggests that the process of language acqui-
sition and the ontogenetic development of math-
ematical skills are intertwined (Berch, Geary, &
Koepke, 2018). A well-known example involves the
proposed relationship between the learning of
verbal-numerals and the emergence of an under-
standing of natural number (Carey, 2009).
To sum up, the evidence reviewed in this section
does not provide a clear demarcation of what thinking
involves language and what thinking does not. It does,
however, support the conclusion that sophisticated
cognition can occur in the absence of language. It
also suggests that such a demarcation may be
difficult to make precisely because of the broad and
deep influences of language on cognition. A great
strength of embodied and grounded approaches to
cognition has always been their ability to explain
infant cognition and the continuity that exists
between human and animal cognition. In other
words, these approaches have always had a ready
explanation for thinking without words. However,
they have not always provided a ready answer for
the systematic influence of language on cognition.
The LENS theory represents an attempt to provide
such an explanation.
5. Thinking with words
As outlined above, a conclusion that we can draw from
the previous discussion is that it is often difficult to dis-
entangle language and thought. There are two
leading explanations for this. The first holds the line
with respect to the independence of thought and
language and explains this difficulty in terms of our
reliance on language for communication. The impor-
tant idea behind this kind of explanation is that the
neural mechanisms responsible for language proces-
sing are largely separate from, and independent of,
those involved in conceptualization and other cogni-
tive processes. The second explanation contends
that language and thought are difficult to disentangle
precisely because they are entangled. In other words,
this difficulty is a consequence of the significant dia-
chronic and synchronic roles that language plays in
our cognitive lives.
For the most part, contemporary researchers have
abandoned the first explanation in favor of the
second. What remains controversial is the nature and
extent of influence of language. While there is
general agreement that language is an important
tool for thinking, there is significant disagreement
about what kind of tool it is and how it works.
Clearly, LENS theory is committed to full-bodied
account of the role played by language in our con-
cepts—one that extends beyond most recent
proposals.
5.1. A neuroenhancement
How does language scaffold and enhance cognition?
To answer this, let’s return briefly to our Tetris
example (Clark & Chalmers, 1998). Tetris experts
rotate the falling shape to help them decide where
to move the piece. This amounts to a manipulation
of the physical environment in order to gain epistemic
advantage. More to the point, it shows how coordi-
nated action can, when appropriately coupled with
the environment, scaffold cognition. Now consider
the cyborg. The cyborg gains a similar epistemic
advantage from the deployment of newfound internal
resources. The LENS theory combines these scenarios.
On the one hand, it acknowledges that language
COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY 7

involves the manipulation of our physical and social
niche. As Borghi and Binkofski put it (2014, p. 19):
Words can be seen as tools because, similar to physical
tools, they allow us to act in the world, together with
and in relation to other individuals; they are social also
since they are acquired and used in a social context.
On the other hand, it also holds that the neurologically
realized language system provides the child with new
representational abilities that enhance her cognitive
reach (Dove, 2014,2018).
This dual benefit is a consequence of the skills
needed to be a fluent speaker of a natural language.
For the sake of explanatory convenience, let’s focus
on oral communication (everything I say will apply
mutatis mutandis to visual forms of linguistic com-
munication such as signing or even writing). To be
successful, a child needs to learn to recognize—and
ultimately produce by means of precise bodily
actions—the speech sounds of a particular language.
In addition to acquiring phonological competence,
the child needs to acquire morphological compe-
tence; that is, she must learn how morphemes
combine to form words. She also needs to acquire syn-
tactic competence and learn how to combine words
(and morphemes) to form meaningful constructions,
phrases, and sentences. Beyond this, she needs to
develop the pragmatic discourse-related skills
needed to comprehend and produce meaningful con-
versations. In sum, becoming a competent speaker of
a natural language involves a suite of grounded skills.
The question then is not whether natural language
competence itself fits with idea of embodied cogni-
tion, but rather to what degree such grounded skills
influence our concepts and thoughts.
The LENS theory is a theory of semantic memory
and thus remains focused on the neuromechanisms
responsible for encoding meaning. In the following
three subsections, I am going to propose three ways
in which linguistic forms and symbols contribute our
concepts. To put it bluntly, I am going to identify
three ways that we think with words. First, our ability
to label objects or events transforms our capacity to
conceptualize them. Second, the associations
between labels provide a new source of information
about the world. Third, the combinatorial properties
of language enhance our cognitive powers. Below, I
survey how labels, verbal associations, and syntax
enrich our concepts.
5.2. Label magic
In general, words and idioms are semantically arbi-
trary. Putting aside onomatopoeia and rough phono-
logical associations with semantic complexity (and
even these are often a matter of degree rather than
clear examples of semantic transparency), most
words are arbitrarily connected to their conceptual
content. Different languages will associate different
words with similar concepts. The same word can
shift meaning over time. This shift can be dramatic
as in the case of the English word hussy which orig-
inates from a contraction of the Middle English word
for housewife, or it can be subtle as in the case of
the English word peruse which at one time meant
read carefully but has come to mean browse.
6
This
semantic arbitrariness fits well with purely communi-
cative conceptions of language. After all, on such con-
ceptions, words label pre-existing concepts that are
handled by fully independent neuromechanisms
(e.g., Fodor, 1975; Gleitman & Papafragou, 2005;
Pinker, 1994). The LENS theory, though, builds on a tra-
dition that emphasizes the influence of language on
cognition (e.g., Clark, 1998; Quine, 1960; Vygotsky,
[1934] 2012). Below, I argue that the semantic arbitrari-
ness of words actually underwrites their capacity to
augment and extend our cognitive powers.
Neuropsychological case studies provide an initial
motivation for a cognitive view of language. It has
been known for some time that patients with
aphasia often experience impairments of in non-lin-
guistic cognitive tasks (Goldstein, 1948; Noppeney &
Wallesch, 2000). In particular, aphasics often experi-
ence difficulty with categorization tasks that required
the identification of a specific attribute shared by
different items rather than a global comparison
between them (Cohen, Kelter, & Woll, 1980;
Semenza, Bisiacchi, & Romani, 1992). The patient
identified as LEW provides a compelling case study
(Davidoff& Roberson, 2004; Roberson, Davidoff,&
Braisby, 1999). LEW experiences great difficulty in
naming pictures of actions or objects (Roberson
et al., 1999). Despite this anomia, LEW is able to
respond appropriately to spoken definitions (Druks &
Shallice, 2000). This suggests that LEW’s semantic
knowledge is preserved to some degree. What is
important for our purposes is that LEW struggles
with taxonomic classification tasks that involve a
single dimension (such as shape or color) but not
8G. DOVE

with thematic classification tasks that involve broader
comparisons (Davidoff& Roberson, 2004; Roberson
et al., 1999).
Following up on this research, Lupyan and Mirman
(2013) compared the performance of 12 aphasic par-
ticipants with 12 age and education matched controls
on a categorization task. Presented with sets of 20 pic-
tures, participants were asked to select all that fita
given criterion. Lupyan and Mirman hypothesized
that the aphasic participants would experience
greater difficulty when the criterion was, in their
words, “low-dimensional”(e.g., things that are green)
than when the criterion was “high-dimensional”(e.g.,
farm animals). This prediction was borne out; not
only were the participants with aphasia selectively
impaired on the low-dimensional task, but the
degree of their impairment was correlated with the
degree of their anomia (Lupyan & Mirman, 2013). In
a related experiment with neurologically intact partici-
pants, a similar selective impairment for taxonomic
categorization and not thematic categorization was
induced by means of a verbal interference task
(Lupyan, 2009).
All of this suggests that there is a causal link
between language and at least some cognitive tasks
(Lupyan, 2012). What mechanisms are responsible
for this? The LENS theory predicts that labels should
act both as a scaffold for cognition and an internal
neuroenhancement. Let’s begin with the scaffold
idea first. Labels create a novel set of perceptual
objects and targets for action (Clark, 2006). As such,
they may help learners become attuned to perceptual
commonalities and overcome the inherent complexity
and noisiness of perceptual inputs (Clark, 1998;
Lupyan & Clark, 2015). For example, in 9-month old
children, categorization is facilitated by the simul-
taneous presentation of words but not tones
(Balaban & Waxman, 1997). Distinct labels (but not dis-
tinct tones, sounds, or emotional expressions) have
been found to help this cohort with an object indivi-
duation task (Xu, 2002). By the time they are a year
old, infants have learned to expect nouns to be
linked to categories of objects (Waxman & Markow,
1995). As we get older, labels may be able to assist cat-
egorization and concept formation in more sophisti-
cated ways. Yuan, Perfors, Tenenbaum, and Xu
(2011) suggest that, “when learning individual words,
children are also learning about words simul-
taneously”. They propose that learning occurs on
multiple levels and provide evidence that preschoo-
lers can learn-to-learn through linguistic tasks. Such
learning is thought to carry of into non-linguistic cog-
nitive domains. There is also evidence that labels con-
tinue to influence learning into adulthood. Labeled
categories are easier to learn than unlabeled cat-
egories even when the relevant experience is held
constant and the labels are redundant (Lupyan,
Rakison, & McClelland, 2007).
Clark (2006) emphasizes the degree to which
language is a physical transformation of our “cognitive
niche”. This transformation explains the scaffolding
effects outlined above. But Clark (2003) has also pro-
posed that we are “natural-born cyborgs”. The LENS
theory takes this proposal seriously and enumerates
the ways in which the neurologically realized
language system plays a role our concepts.
Our current focus is on the role played by labels. All
too often, discussions of conceptual embodiment
simply ignore the contributions of linguistic represen-
tations. It seems likely that this is due to an implicit or
unstated commitment to the functional indepen-
dence of the conceptual system. No matter how you
slice it, though, this lacuna is problematic. Any suc-
cessful account of the neuromechanisms responsible
for semantic memory needs to provide an explanation
of how the conceptual system and the language
system interact. A notable exception to this general
trend is Pulvermüller (2013,2018). Pulvermüller pro-
poses that distributed linguistic representations
serve as anchors in the formation of Action Perception
Circuits (APCs). Learning a language, on this account,
leads to the formation of these distributed circuits
by means of both Hebbian and anti-Hebbian learning
mechanisms. In other words, linguistic forms serve as a
means of stabilizing and organizing grounded
representations.
This proposal raises a question: Does this anchoring
alter or transform our embodied concepts? Some
accounts of the role of language in thought would
seem to answer this question negatively. For instance,
it has been proposed that linguistic forms can serve as
symbolic placeholders for multimodal simulations
(Zwaan, 2016). On this approach, labels underwrite
our capacity to use language as a heuristic shortcut
that can be deployed when conditions do not
require complex task performance. While the shortcut
idea is appealing and enjoys some empirical support,
there are also reasons to think that it does not go far
COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY 9

enough. For instance, behavioral data suggest that
verbal cues (such as the spoken word dog) activate
more general representations than non-verbal cues
(such as the sound of a dog barking; Edmiston &
Lupyan, 2015; Lupyan & Bergen, 2015). In keeping
with this, the Label-Feedback Hypothesis (LPH) pro-
poses that labels actively modulate both perceptual
and conceptual processes (Lupyan, 2012).
The LENS theory represents a broad view of the role
of language in cognition and, as such, leaves room for
specific sub-theories and even further empirical inves-
tigation. In this section, I have reviewed the evidence
suggesting that verbal labels serve as both a cognitive
scaffold and a neuroenhancement. With respect to
this latter claim, there seems to be room for linguistic
forms to serve as both anchors for APCs (as Pulvermül-
ler envisions) and as online modulators of categoriz-
ation processes (as Lupyan envisions).
5.3. A new source of information
The statistical patterns of words and larger chunks of
language are a rich source of information about the
world and its contents. In this section, I explore the
idea that the conceptual system actively leverages
this information. In particular, I propose that the prag-
matic skills derived in order to facilitate verbal com-
munication, especially those that involve predicting
word selection, may be employed by our concepts.
Distributional models treat concepts in terms of
knowledge of statistical patterns derived from
spoken and written language. A number of compu-
tational models that extract statistical regularities
from large corpuses, including the Latent Semantic
Analysis model (Landauer & Dumais, 1997; Landauer
et al., 1998), the Hyperspace Analog to Language
model (Lund & Burgess, 1996), and the Latent Dirichlet
Allocation model (Blei et al., 2003) have been devel-
oped. The core idea behind these models is that the
meaning of a word is in part constrained by the
company it keeps (Firth, 1957). They assume that
semantic-relatedness can be constrained by infor-
mation gleaned from aggregating the linguistic con-
texts in which a given word appears. Despite the
fact that these models typically ignore seemingly
important linguistic properties such as word-order
and phrase structure, they have been shown to
perform remarkably well on lexical access and lexical
similarity tasks (Louwerse, 2011).
Linguistic and non-linguistic experiences are inde-
pendent, yet complementary, sources of information
about the world. This has lead several researchers to
propose that we should adopt a hybrid approach
that combines grounded simulations and distribu-
tional knowledge (Andrews, Frank, & Vigliocco, 2014;
Louwerse & Jeuniaux, 2010; Riordan & Jones, 2010).
Working within a statistical learning framework, for
instance, Andrews, Vigliocco, and Vinson (2009)
suggest that language-based distributional data and
is likely to be more helpful with abstract concepts
than non-linguistic experiential data. They hypoth-
esize that the most effective semantic representations
would thus involve the statistical combination of both
and develop a model that combined these types of
data. This model’s performance on several cognitive
tasks correlated with previously gathered behavioral
evidence better than models that exclusively relied
on data of a single type (for further evidence of the
advantages of hybrid models see Bruni, Tran, &
Baroni, 2014; Steyvers, 2010). The success of this inte-
grated model suggests that the ability to take advan-
tage of the distributional information contained within
natural language would be a useful enhancement to
an experientially based conceptual system. While a
lot of work remains to be done to show that the neuro-
mechanisms responsible for encoding the distribu-
tional properties of language are active in
conceptual processing, the success of hybrid models
offers a strong circumstantial case in their favor. In
keeping with this, some behavioral studies identify
independent language-based and embodied factors
in conceptual processing (Barsalou et al., 2008; Lou-
werse & Jeuniaux, 2010).
The picture of concepts that emerges from this
section bears a striking resemblance to a recent pro-
posal that is motivated by a commitment to associa-
tionism. Tillas (2015) argues that language serves “as
grist to the mill of cognition”. In particular he
defends a position that he refers to as the labels and
associations in thinking hypothesis (or LASSO). The
LASSO hypothesis identifies three important types of
associations: (1) associations between a word and a
concept that is grounded in sensorimotor systems;
(2) associations between grounded concepts; and (3)
associations between words. While then LENS theory
is a broad account of the role of language in embo-
died cognition and thus leaves room for non-associat-
ive links, it is clearly committed to the importance of
10 G. DOVE

each of these sources of information. There is a key
point of disagreement between the LENS and LASSO
theories, however. The latter maintains the strict sep-
aration the language and conceptual systems.
Language is merely grist to our cognitive mill. The
LENS theory offers a more integrative picture: it not
only treats language experience as grist for the mill
of our concepts, it also considers the neurologically
realized language system as part the mill of our
concepts.
5.4. A symbolic medium
A natural language is a structured symbolic system
consisting of stored lexical items and combinatorial
rules or principles (Jackendoff,2007). Some cognitive
scientists have proposed that these structural proper-
ties reflect those of an underlying amodal represen-
tational system often referred to as a language of
thought (Fodor, 1975). Supporters of embodied and
grounded cognition, though, deny the existence of
such a mentelese. This raises the question of how
the structural properties of language relate to those
associated with non-linguistic cognition.
Linguistic symbols are syntactically re-combinable.
This fact underwrites a number of the core properties
of the language system. For example, the ability to
recursively combine symbols in accordance with an
implicit understanding of rules or principles explains
the inherent productivity of language (Pinker, 1994).
Re-combinability also explains the systematicity of
language (Fodor, 1975; Fodor & Pylyshyn, 1988;
Pinker, 1994). The idea behind systematicity is that
our ability to produce a sentence such as Dog bites
man is intimately connected to our ability to form
other sentences such as Man bites dog. Finally, syntactic
re-combinability seems to contribute to the stimulus-
independence of language (Chomsky, 1966)by
helping explain how we are able to produce and under-
stand linguistic utterances that are not an immediate
response to proximal environmental stimulation.
I need to be careful here, though, because I do not
want to imply that thinking without words must
involve non-combinatorial representational systems.
Indeed, I am willing to concede than animal cognition
is often productive, systematic, and perhaps even
stimulus-independent. Certainly, supporters of per-
ceptual symbols have argued that these properties
can be captured by nonlinguistic embodied
representations grounded in action, emotion, and per-
ception systems (Barsalou, 1999; Barsalou & Prinz,
1997). Given this, my argument in support of the
importance of language as novel representational
format will not depend on the mere fact that language
is a combinatorial system but will rather focus on the
specific combinatorial properties exhibited by
language and the importance of the fact that is an
acquired symbol technology.
In a theoretical exploration of animal and human
cognition, Camp (2009) proposes that stimulus-inde-
pendence and re-combinability should be taken to
be degree properties. She proposes that natural
language enhances the combinatorial properties of
nonlinguistic cognition in at least four ways. First,
natural language is likely to lead us to consider more
thoughts because it enables one to hear the thoughts
of others. Second, the semantic arbitrariness of linguis-
tic symbols makes it easier to reproduce the same (or
at least, similar) thought in different situations. Third,
the transparent syntactic structure of natural language
highlights the potential re-combinability of thoughts
and thus encourages us to entertain thoughts that
we might not have considered otherwise. Finally,
natural language provides a sufficiently rich expressive
medium to allow one to represent truth-values and
inferential relations among thoughts. Camp contends
that these enhancements mean that a creature with
language is likely to enjoy a general cognitive advan-
tage over a creature that does not.
Camp’s ideas can be applied to grounded cogni-
tion. The suggestion then becomes that the stimulus
independence and re-combinability of language
differs in degree from non-linguistic grounded rep-
resentational systems. Given this, the addition of
language enhances our cognition in the way that
Camp suggests. Other researchers have recently
offered similar proposals. For instance, Tillas (2017,
p. 107) proposes that language facilitates our capacity
to form endogenous thoughts, which are in his words,
“thoughts that we activate in a top-down manner or in
the absence of the appropriate stimuli”. Clearly, this
mirrors Camp’s suggestion that language may offer a
greater degree of stimulus independence. Similarly,
Lynott and Connell (2010) propose that conceptual
combination arises from the interaction between the
linguistic and simulation systems. This fits with
Camp’s suggestion that the re-combinability of
language may encourage novel thoughts.
COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY 11

Syntactic properties may also support inferential
reasoning. To drive home this point, Weiskopf (2010)
asks us to consider Chomsky’s famous sentence, “Col-
orless green ideas sleep furiously”. While it is true that
linguists have differed over the degree to which this
sentence is semantically or syntactically deviant
(Harris, 1993), there is little question that it is difficult
to perceptually simulate or act upon. Nevertheless,
from it’s linguistic structure alone, we are able to
infer that if this sentence is true then the relevant
ideas are colorless and green, and they sleep furiously.
In a related vein, Shallice and Cooper (2013) argue that
the syntactic properties of recursion and argument
role filling support certain computational abilities
that are beyond the reach of nonlinguistic represen-
tational systems.
Following the general presuppositions of the
research literature, I have been treating concepts as
a unified phenomenon. However, some have
suggested that we should distinguish between
different types of semantic competence. In particular,
Marconi (1997) proposes that we should distinguish
between referential and inferential semantic compe-
tence. Referential competence mediates our capacity
to connect words to objects and events in the world.
Inferential competence on the other hand mediates
our capacity to connect words to other words as
part of inferential reasoning. It depends crucially on
abilities that enable us to verbally express ourselves
and understand what others are saying. Calzavarini
(2017, p. 163) explains, “Such ‘intralinguistic’abilities
are semantic because, in order to exercise them, a
speaker must possess an internalized network specify-
ing semantic connections between a given word (e.g.,
cat) and other words of a natural language (e.g.,
animal,meow)”. Reviewing the extant neuropsycholo-
gical and neuroscience data, Calzavarini (2017)finds
evidence suggesting that our referential and inferen-
tial abilities are supported by (at least partially) distinct
neuroanatomical regions. While the LENS theory is not
committed to the ultimate viability of the referential/
inferential distinction, the view offered here clearly
embraces the idea that the language system supports
inferential semantic processes.
6. Abstract concepts
In this section, I hope to show that language, as a neu-
roenhancement and a scaffold, is especially helpful
with abstract concepts. My defense of this claim will
involve two steps. First, I outline how abstract con-
cepts represent an important challenge for grounded
cognition. Next, I point to evidence implicating the
language system in the processing of abstract
concepts.
6.1. An empirical and theoretical challenge
Our ability to acquire and use abstract concepts
raises important empirical and theoretical questions
for any approach to concepts that appeals to
affective and sensorimotor grounding. Much of the
evidence for grounded cognition involves concepts
that refer to objects and events that are intuitively
connected to our sensorimotor experience (Kem-
merer, 2015). In addition, because they generally
refer to objects and events that we do not directly
experience, it is difficult to see how they can be cap-
tured by representations grounded in affective and
sensorimotor systems (Chatterjee, 2010;Dove,2009;
Mahon, 2015).
Adifficulty facing any discussion of abstract con-
cepts is that it is not exactly clear how they should
be defined, operationally or otherwise. Researchers
have offered different characterizations of the
abstract/concrete distinction. Barr and Caplan (1987)
propose that we should distinguish concepts that
are categorized by extrinsic features (which are associ-
ated with relations between two or more entities)
from those that are represented by intrinsic features
(which are associated with individual entities). Crutch
and Warrington (2005) propose that we should draw
a qualitative distinction between concepts that that
are organized around semantic association and
those that are organized primarily around similarity.
Wiemer-Hastings and Xu (2005) propose that abstract
concepts are both less contextually specific and pre-
dominately associated with social aspects of situ-
ations. Shea (2018) proposes that socially oriented
metacognition might be especially important for
abstract concepts.
Researchers have employed several measures in an
effort to trace the contours of how concepts might
differ relative to their degree of abstractness. These
measures include body–object interaction (Siakaluk
et al., 2008), concreteness (Marschark & Paivio, 1977),
context-availability (Schwanenflugel & Shoben,
1983), emotional valence (Kousta, Vigliocco, Vinson,
12 G. DOVE

Andrews, & Del Campo, 2011), imageability (Paivio,
1986), interoceptive strength (Connell, Lynott, &
Banks, 2018), semantic richness (Recchia & Jones,
2012) and strength of perceptual experience
(Connell & Lynott, 2012). The result of this research is
a mixed picture: while these measures correlate up
to a point, they are not equivalent (Kousta et al.,
2011). One might respond to this situation by propos-
ing that we have just not come up with either the
correct understanding of abstract concepts or the
most accurate measure, but I contend that it is more
likely that abstract concepts represent a hetero-
geneous class (see also Barsalou, Dutriaux, & Schee-
pers, 2018). If this is the case, then abstract concepts
may pose more than one challenge to grounded cog-
nition (Dove, 2016). Nevertheless, it will be sufficient
for my purposes
7
to roughly characterize abstract con-
cepts as those that, when compared to concrete or
highly imageable concepts, tend to refer to entities
or events that are harder to perceive with our senses
or manipulate directly with our actions; to involve
more complex relations, introspective features, or
social interactions; and to exhibit greater variability
across contexts.
The LENS theory adds an account of how language
augments and transforms a conceptual system
grounded in action, emotion, and perception
systems: the ability to manipulate linguistic symbols
simultaneously extends our capacity to access infor-
mation in our cognitive niche and provides an
effective means of processing that information.
Another way to put this point is that language
serves as both a social and a cognitive tool. In this,
the LENS theory fits well with recent versions of WAT
theory that emphasize the cognitive significance of
words in addition to their effectiveness as a social
tool (e.g., Borghi et al., 2018). In a recent article,
Borghi and her colleagues explain (2018, p. 9),
words are tools to perform actions modifying the state of
our social environment and are tools that change the
state of our inner processes, helping us formulate predic-
tions and facilitating perception, categorization, and
thought. As such they are tools for shaping the internal
state of our minds/brains.
The LENS theory adds to this perspective by providing
an explanation of how the neural reuse of the
language system enables us to encode and process
aspects of our conceptual knowledge.
6.2. Abstract concepts in the brain
According to the LENS theory, language is a general
cognitive enhancement. As such, it is likely to be
involved in concepts of all sorts of stripes. The particu-
lar hypothesis under consideration in this section is
that we are likely to lean more heavily on language
in the processing of abstract concepts than in the pro-
cessing of concrete concepts. In this section, I am
going to consider evidence suggesting that abstract
concepts are represented differently in the brain
than other concepts. Some of this evidence specifically
implicates the language system.
The idea that we process abstract concepts differ-
ently than other concepts is supported by a robust
and diverse body of evidence that goes back
decades. An important early indication of a possible
functional asymmetry was the discovery of concrete-
ness effects in which concrete words exhibit a
number of processing advantages over abstract
words (Paivio, 1986; Wattenmaker & Shoben, 1987).
In keeping with our discussion of the multiple
measures employed to characterize the abstract/
non-abstract distinction (or spectrum), similar effects
have been found with other measures. Consider for
instance the measure of body–object interaction
(BOI), a measure that is meant to capture the per-
ceived ease with which a human body can physically
interact with category exemplars. Experiments reveal
that words with higher BOI ratings are processed
more efficiently than words with lower BOI ratings
(Siakaluk et al., 2008; Yap, Pexman, Wellsby, Har-
greaves, & Huff,2012).
8
Neuropsychological case studies provide further
reason to think that abstract concepts are represented
differently in the brain. Left hemisphere damage has
been correlated with the degree of impairment for
the processing of abstract words in studies of patients
who present with aphasia (Goodglass, Hyde, & Blum-
stein, 1969), deep dyslexia (Franklin, Howard, & Patter-
son, 1995; Shallice & Warrington, 1975), and deep
dysphasia (Katz & Goodglass, 1990; Martin & Saffran,
1990). A subset of patients with semantic dementia,
a neurodegenerative disease that primarily affects
the anterior and inferior portions of both temporal
lobes, exhibit reverse concreteness effects (Bonner
et al., 2009; Reilly & Peelle, 2008; Yi, Moore, & Gross-
man, 2007). Reverse concreteness effects have also
been found in patients with herpes simplex
COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY 13

encephalitis, which disrupts the anterior temporal
lobes (Sirigu, Duhamel, & Poncet, 1991; Warrington &
Shallice, 1984). A recent study of seven patients who
had undergone a selective unilateral anterior temporal
resection (four in the right hemisphere and three in
the left hemisphere) compared their performance on
semantic processing tasks to healthy controls and a
group of patients with a more general semantic
impairment associated with a selective amygdalo-hip-
pocampectomy (Loiselle, Rouleau, Nguyen, Dubeau, &
Joubert, 2012). While both groups of patients exhib-
ited impaired semantic processing, only the patients
with selective anterior lobe resection were particularly
impaired with concrete words in comparison to
abstract words.
The fact that reverse concreteness effects occur in a
minority of SD patients has generated a fair amount of
controversy. Hoffman and Lambon Ralph (2011) for
example argue that it is not a typical feature of SD.
In their study of 7 patients, they used multiple tests
from earlier studies and found that comprehension
for both concrete and abstract words was impaired
but that concrete words tended to exhibit an advan-
tage (for further support of this generalization see
Hoffman, Jones, & Lambon Ralph, 2013). They did
find that on some tests this advantage was reversed
but argue that this is likely due to confounding vari-
ables such as differences in word frequency and lack
of sufficient variability in imageability. They also note
that several of individuals in the literature showing
strong reverse concreteness effects (with SD and
other disorders) have had greater left hemisphere
damage and high levels of education (Hoffman &
Lambon Ralph, 2011, p. 2109). More recently,
Hoffman et al. (2013) have suggested that the occur-
rence of reverse concreteness effects in some patients
might arise from the variability of the damage under-
lying the disorder. Much of this controversy revolves
around the correct interpretation and explanation of
SD, which is clearly beyond the purview of this
essay. It is sufficient for my purposes to note that,
when reverse concreteness effects do appear, linguis-
tic experience and language areas seem to be
implicated.
Although the results of brain imaging studies are
somewhat variable (Binder, 2007), a number of
studies find evidence of a neurological asymmetry
between the brain areas activated by abstract and
concrete concepts. To give an example, participants
in one study were visually presented with three
nouns in the form of a triangle and asked to decide
which of the two bottom nouns was most semantically
similar to the top noun (Sabsevitz, Medler, Seidenberg,
& Binder, 2005). Abstract nouns elicited greater acti-
vation in the left superior temporal and left inferior
frontal cortex, while concrete nouns elicited greater
activation in a bilateral network of association areas.
To give another, participants read simple sentences
that contained pairs of abstract, concrete, or mixed
(abstract-concrete and concrete-abstract) words as
part of an fMRI study (Sakreida et al., 2013). The fully
abstract pairs engaged the left middle temporal
gyrus while the fully concrete pairs engaged a
fronto-parietal network. Several studies find that
abstract words elicit greater activation than concrete
words in superior regions of the left anterior temporal
lobe (Binder, Westbury, McKiernan, Possing, & Medler,
2005; Giesbrecht, Gamblin, & Swaab, 2004; Noppeney
& Price, 2004; Sabsevitz et al., 2005) and inferior
regions of the left prefrontal cortex (Binder et al.,
2005; Giesbrecht et al., 2004; Goldberg, Perfetti, &
Schneider, 2006; Noppeney & Price, 2004; Sabsevitz
et al., 2005). Meta-analyses find that these areas are
the most likely to show increased activation with
abstract concepts (Binder, Desai, Graves, & Conant,
2009;Wang, Conder, Blitzer, & Shinkareva, 2010).
The neuroimaging findings are bolstered by an
experiment carried out with healthy participants. Accu-
racy on a lexical decision task decreased with abstract
concepts when repetitive trans-cranial magnetic stimu-
lation (rTMS) was applied over the left inferior frontal
gyrus and the left superior temporal gyrus, but accu-
racy decreased with concrete concepts when rTMS
was applied over the right superior temporal gyrus
(Papagno, Fogliata, Catricala, & Miniussi, 2009).
The generalization that emerges from the neuros-
cientific evidence is that, when we compare the
activity associated with abstract words to that associ-
ated with concrete words in various semantic tasks,
the major brain areas that most reliably exhibit
greater activation are the left superior ATL and the
left IFG. The left superior ATL has been linked to
high-level speech perception and sentence compre-
hension (Kemmerer, 2015). It has been found to
respond more to sentences than randomly ordered
lists of words (Humphries, Binder, Medler, & Lie-
benthal, 2006; Vandenberghe, Nobre, & Price, 2002),
and some researchers have proposed that it is
14 G. DOVE

involved in sentence-level compositional semantic
processing (Hickok & Poeppel, 2007). The left IFG
(which includes Broca’s area) has been linked to
several types of language processing, including audi-
tory-verbal short-term memory (Kemmerer, 2015).
For example, it has been associated with the inhibition
of contextually present irrelevant verbal information
(Badre & Wagner, 2005; Thompson-Schill et al., 2002).
Several researchers have proposed that it plays an
important role in the retrieval and selection of seman-
tic knowledge (Badre & Wagner, 2007;Jeffries &
Lambon Ralph, 2006; Thompson-Schill, 2003).
Hoffman, Binney, and Lambon Ralph (2015) carried
out an fMRI experiment that was inspired by these
broad functional associations and the observation
that abstract concepts tend to have both less
modality-specific content and more variable, context-
dependent meanings. They compared semantic judg-
ments involving abstract and concrete words either
with, or without, contextual support. The response
profiles of the left ATL and the left IFG were different:
the left superior temporal gyrus responded most
strongly to abstract words when they had contextual
support and left IFG activation was greatest with
abstract words when the provided contextual cues
were irrelevant to the semantic judgment.
I need to be clear about what I am claiming and
what I am not claiming. First, I am claiming that
abstract concepts are represented in the brain differ-
ently than concrete concepts are. This difference is
likely due to a number of factors. In keeping with
this possible multiplicity, distinct concreteness
effects have been found in both the left and right
hemispheres (Huang, Lee, & Federmeier, 2010).
Abstract words in a semantic categorization task
have also been found to be associated with a particu-
larly widespread pattern of cortical activation that
includes temporal, parietal and frontal regions
(Pexman, Hargreaves, Edwards, Henry, & Goodyear,
2007). Second, I am claiming that part of this differ-
ence is due to the activity of the language system.
What I am not claiming is that the entire neuroanato-
mical abstract/concrete distinction is explained solely
by the contribution of the language system.
7. Language and theory of mind
In this section, I examine something of a test case:
research on the emergence of theory of mind in
children. Significantly, this research has been
pursued without any commitment to the research
program of embodied cognition. In other words, it
represents an independent investigation of the acqui-
sition of a developmentally significant body of
abstract knowledge. Given this context—a research
effort that is not focused on abstract concepts as
any kind of exception or difficult theoretical chal-
lenge—the discovery of a robust body of evidence
pointing to the importance of language provides
additional support for the LENS approach.
Our ability to infer, imagine, and reason about the
mental states of others is widely recognized as a
core feature of human social cognition (Leslie, 2001).
Consequently, researchers have expended a great
deal effort trying to uncover the development
course of the skills involved in understanding others.
A great deal of research attention has been placed
on the development of the ability to attribute false
beliefs to others under various conditions (Wimmer
& Perner, 1983; although see Bloom & German, 2000
for a critical assessment of this practice). What has
emerged is a robust body of evidence suggesting
that language can play an important causal role in
the development of theory of mind (de Villiers & de
Villiers, 2014).
There are three leading types of theoretical expla-
nations for the apparent influence of language on
the development of theory of mind (de Villiers & de
Villiers, 2014)—each of which fits well with one of
the proposals outlined above in our discussion of
the LENS theory. The first holds that learning to
apply mental state terms provide the child with an
invaluable leg up with respect to the acquisition of
theory of mind skills. In other words, the labels them-
selves play an important role here. This explanation is
supported by the observation that frequent use of
mental terms by young children with parents, siblings,
and friends is correlated with later degree of success
on false belief tasks (Brown, Donelan-McCall, &
Dunn, 1996; Dunn, Brown, Slomkowski, Tesla, &
Youngblade, 1991;Ruffman, Slade, & Crowe, 2002).
The second type of theoretical explanation holds
that conversations provide essential input for learning
about the mental states of others (Harris, 2005; Peter-
son & Siegal, 1995). Learning to talk explicitly about
mental states is important, but so is learning the prag-
matic dynamics of everyday discourse. de Villiers and
de Villiers (2014, p. 314) point to the following possible
COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY 15

exchange as an example of how even mundane con-
versations might provide a window into the beliefs
of others:
“I am going to have chocolate spread on my toast”.
“That’s Marmite!”
While there is no explicit discussion of beliefs, the
ability to understand this conversation requires sensi-
tivity to the possibility of ignorance and false belief.
This view is supported in part by a series of studies
involving deaf participants (Courtin & Melot, 1998;
Peterson, 2009). Severe delays in the acquisition of
theory of mind skills have been observed in neurocog-
nitively unimpaired deaf children of hearing parents
who are not fluent signers (Courtin & Melot, 1998;
Peterson, 2009; Peterson & Siegal, 1995; Schick, de Vil-
liers, de Villiers, & Hoffmeister, 2007). Because these
children generally acquire sign language outside of
the home, they tend to be relatively late signers. In
contrast, children who grow up in a household with
afluent signer tend to be early signers. A series of
studies compared these groups with respect to their
performance on theory of mind measures and found
that the children of non-signing hearing parents lag
behind children with at least one signing deaf
parent (Peterson & Siegal, 1999; Woolfe, Want, &
Siegal, 2002). This finding fits well with evidence that
the interactions between deaf mothers and deaf chil-
dren are similar in content, extent, and frequency with
those between hearing mothers and children while
the interactions between hearing mothers and deaf
children fall short on each of these dimensions
(Meadow, Greenberg, Erting, & Carmichael, 1981). An
account that connects theory of mind understanding
to access to relevant conversations provides a compel-
ling explanation for the lag in the acquisition theory of
mind skills in late-signers when compared to early-
signers. This idea is bolstered by research involving
hearing children that demonstrates the effectiveness
of conversation-based interventions on false belief
tasks (Appleton & Reddy, 1996).
The third leading type of explanation links the
emergence of theory of mind abilities to the child’s
mastery of certain linguistic constructions (Astington
& Jenkins, 1999; de Villiers, 2007). Here, the idea is
that aspects of linguistic competence play a causal
role in the acquisition of theory of mind understand-
ing. In particular, researchers have focused on the
hypothesis that the ability to formulate complement
clauses might contribute to the emergence of theory
of mind. Building on their previous example, de Villiers
and de Villiers (2014, p. 314) offer the following pair of
sentences:
“Joanna thought that it was chocolate spread”.
“But it was really Marmite”.
The idea is that an increased competence with certain
constructions may facilitate the child’s ability to think
about the mental states of others. In other words,
complement clauses may provide a useful means of
representing the contents of other people’s minds.
A diverse body of evidence supports this proposal.
For one, the ability to handle complement syntax is a
robust predictor of performance on false-belief tasks
(de Villiers & de Villiers, 2012; de Villiers & Pyers,
2002; Low, 2010). Strikingly, this relationship holds
for several populations of children who experience
language delays—including deaf children of hearing
parents (de Villiers & de Villiers, 2012; Pyers &
Senghas, 2009; Schick et al., 2007), children with
specific language impairment (de Villiers, Burns, &
Pearson, 2003; Farrant, Mayberry, & Fletcher, 2012;
Miller, 2004), and high-functioning individuals with
an autism spectrum disorder (Tager-Flusberg &
Joseph, 2005). Hale and Tager-Flusberg (2003) com-
pared the effectiveness of three interventions on pre-
schoolers: the first involved training children on false
belief tasks, the second involved training children on
sentential complements, and the third involved train-
ing children on relative clauses (which are similar in
syntactic complexity to sentential complements). Chil-
dren trained on false belief tasks showed improve-
ment on theory of mind tasks but did not show a
corresponding improvement on language tasks. Chil-
dren trained on sentential complements, on the
other hand, showed improvement on both types.
Finally, children trained on relative clauses showed
no appreciable improvement in theory of mind under-
standing. This evidence supports the notion that the
acquisition of sentential complements contributes to
the emergence of theory of mind in preschoolers.
As was the case with the influences of language on
categorization discussed in section five above, the
influence of language on false belief tasks does not
appear to be limited to early development. For
instance, verbal shadowing has been shown to
16 G. DOVE

disrupt performance on a nonverbal false-belief task in
neurotypical adults (Newton & de Villiers, 2007).
In sum, researchers have offered three distinct
explanations for the apparent influence that language
has on the development of theory of mind. Each of
these enjoys significant empirical support. We
should keep three things in mind. First, none of
these explanations excludes the others. It is entirely
possible that they all hold and that language plays
each of these roles to a greater or a lesser degree.
Second, none of them requires that language is
necessary for theory of mind. While language may
help, it need not be the only developmental
pathway. In keeping with this, one of the most suc-
cessful interventions yet to be investigated involves
training children to understand cartoon-like thought
bubbles (Wellman, Hollander, & Schult, 1996;
Wellman & Peterson, 2013).
Each of these three proposals fits well with the LENS
theory. For instance, LENS theory predicts that the
ability to affix a label to categorize objects or events
transforms our capacity to conceptualize and think
about them. While this is true with concepts in
general, this cognitive leverage seems especially
important with respect to abstract concepts. While it
may be difficult to provide a clear definition of
abstractness, there is a clear sense in which the
mental states of others are not part of our direct
experience. The fact that mental state labels appear
to facilitate the emergence of theory of mind can
thus be seen as a specific instance of a general
phenomenon. The LENS theory also predicts that the
informational features of conversations should make
an important contribution to concept acquisition.
Finally, the LENS theory emphasizes the degree to
which the representational properties of language
can influence our concepts. This would underwrite
the sort of syntactic bootstrapping that appears to
be associated with the acquisition of theory of mind.
8. Conclusion
Language plays an important role in our concepts. It
not only provides an effective means of gleaning
and expressing information about the world; it also
serves as a modality for thinking. Some have argued
that the fact language plays such a central role in
our concepts demonstrates the limits of embodiment
(Pecher, 2018; Pecher & Zeelenberg, 2018). In this
essay, I have outlined an account of language’s role
that fits within the broad outlines of embodied cogni-
tion. I have argued that language should be viewed as
both an embodied neuroenhancement and a cogni-
tive scaffold. A consequence of this proposal is that
the contribution of language to our concepts is likely
to be multifaceted. Consider the apparent influences
of language on theory of mind: these appear to
include top-down influences associated with linguistic
labels, new sources of information provided by the
statistical features of conversations, and opportunities
for syntactic bootstrapping underwritten by linguistic
constructions. More broadly, the LENS theory empha-
sizes the important contributions of labels, distribu-
tional patterns, and the compositional properties of
language to cognition. Recognizing that language
does more than provide external support for the con-
ceptual system opens up a number of new areas of
research and provides a coherent account of thinking
with words that encompasses several elements of
other extant theories.
Notes
1. The LENS theory does not require adopting a particular
stance with respect to whether the sort of examples
that Clark and Chalmers have in mind should count as
instances of extended cognition or merely as instances
of embedded cognition (Rupert, 2010).
2. It also provides a useful means of highlighting the areas
of agreement and perhaps disagreement between
Clark’s ideas about the impact of language on cognition
(Clark, 1998,2006,2011), which tend to be connected to
his ideas about extended cognition, and those on offer in
this essay.
3. I do not have the space to get into a protracted discus-
sion with respect to the status of specific claims concern-
ing our innate endowment for language (a good place to
start is Cowie, 1999). It is worth noting, though, that nati-
vist claims have become progressively weaker and more
general over time.
4. Although semantic memory is often associated with
word meaning (and investigated through experiments
employing linguistic stimuli), it is generally defined in
opposition to episodic memory (Tulving, 1972). Episodic
memory involves the recall of the specific things that we
have done, seen, heard, etc. It is thought to encode the
temporal, spatial, and autobiographical aspects of what
happened. Semantic memory, by contrast, does not
directly encode the contextual details associated with
the formation of the memory. Conceptual knowledge
for the most part would thus fit within the purview of
semantic memory.
COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY 17

5. Unfortunately, he ordered fish –something that he did
not like.
6. Discussion of the history of these terms can be found
in their respective Oxford English dictionary entries.
The details for these entries are given in the reference
list (Hussy,n.d.;Peruse,n.d.).
7. After all, the focus of this essay is the role that language
plays in our concepts and not the precise nature of
abstract concepts. A rough and ready characterization
of abstract concepts that enables us to access the
extant data should be sufficient for our needs.
8. Interestingly, these sort of concreteness effects are not
found with all of the proposed measures. Controlling
for age of acquisition, context availability, familiarity,
imageability, and other variables, Kousta et al. (2011)
found that abstract words have a reaction time advan-
tage (rather than a disadvantage) over concrete words.
They suggest that this reverse concreteness effect may
be due to the fact that, as a group, abstract concepts
rely more on emotion.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
ORCID
Guy Dove http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0470-7006
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