Erica Cosentino

Time, language and flexibility of the mind: The role of mental time travel in linguistic comprehension and production

According to Chomsky, creativity is a critical property of human language, particularly the aspect of “the creative use of language” concerning the appropriateness to a situation. How language can be creative but appropriate to a situation is an unsolvable mystery from the Chomskyan point of view. We propose that language appropriateness can be explained by considering the role of the human capacity for Mental Time Travel at its foundation, together with social and ecological intelligences within a triadic language-grounding system. Our proposal is based on the change of perspective from the analysis of individual sentences to the flux of speech in which the temporal dimension of language is much more relevant.

Keeping the route and speaking coherently: The hidden link between spatial navigation and discourse processing

Abstract In this paper we argue that a “hidden link” correlates discourse processing and spatial navigation. Specifically, we argue that two navigational systems (planning the route and landmark knowledge) can be profitably used to account for the analysis of the coherence of the flow of discourse. Consistent with this hypothesis, some brain regions activated by spatial navigation tasks are strikingly overlapping with the regions involved in discourse processing. Moreover, brain damaged people have severe deficits at the level of discourse processing that can be interpreted in terms of an impaired navigational capacity to orient themselves in the flow of discourse.

Processing Narrative Coherence: Towards a top-down model of discourse

Models of discourse and narration elaborated within the classical ncompositional framework have been characterized as bottom-up models, naccording to which discourse analysis proceeds incrementally, from nphrase and sentence local meaning to discourse global meaning. In this npaper we will argue against these models. Assuming as a case study the nissue of discourse coherence, we suggest that the assessment of ncoherence is a top-down process, in which the construction of a nsituational interpretation at the global meaning level guides local nmeaning analysis. In support of our hypothesis, we explore the role of nexecutive functions (brain functions involved in planning and norganization of goal-oriented behaviors) in coherences establishment, ndiscussing the results of several studies on narrative abilities of npatients with brain injuries. We suggest that, compared to other nmodels of discourse processing focused on comprehension, our model is na viable candidate for an integrated account of discourse ncomprehension and production.

Self in time and language

Time has been considered a crucial factor in distinguishing between two levels of self-awareness: the core, or minimal self, and the extended, or narrative self. Herein, I focus on this last concept of the self and, in particular, on the relationship between the narrative self and language. In opposition to the claim that the narrative self is a linguistic construction, my idea is that it is created by the functioning of mental time travel, that is, the faculty of human beings to project themselves mentally backwards in time to relive, or forward to anticipate, events. Moreover, I propose that narrative language itself should be considered a product of a core brain network that includes mechanisms, such as mental time travel, mindreading, and visuo-spatial systems.

The Time-Course of Sentence Meaning Composition. N400 Effects of the Interaction between Context-Induced and Lexically Stored Affordances

Contemporary semantic theories can be classified along two dimensions: (i) the way and time-course in which contextual factors influence sentence truth-conditions; and (ii) whether and to what extent comprehension involves sensory, motor and emotional processes. In order to explore this theoretical space, our ERP study investigates the time-course of the interaction between the lexically specified telic component of a noun (the function of the object to which the noun refers to, e.g., a funnel is generally used to pour liquids into containers) and an ad-hoc affordance contextually induced by the situation described in the discourse. We found that, if preceded by a neutral discourse context, a verb incongruent with the nouns telic component as in “She uses the funnel to hang her coat” elicited an enhanced N400 compared to a congruent verb as in “She uses the funnel to pour water into a container.” However, if the situation introduced in the preceding discourse induced a new function for the object as an ad-hoc affordance (e.g., the funnel is glued to the wall and the agent wants to hang the coat), we observed a crossing-over regarding the direction of the N400 effect: comparing the ad-hoc affordance-inducing context with the neutral context, the N400 for the incongruent verb was significantly reduced, whereas the N400 for the congruent verb was significantly enhanced. We explain these results as a consequence of the incorporation of the contextually triggered ad-hoc affordance into the meaning of the noun. Combining these results with an analysis of semantic similarity values between test sentences and contexts, we argue that one possibility is that the incorporation of an ad-hoc affordance may be explained on the basis of the mental simulation of concurrent motor information.