Prof. Lynne Murray (Winnicott Research Unit, Psychology Department, Reading University) will give a talk on:
How early interactions with infants might support the development of social understanding and cognition
3-5pm, Thursday 5th June
in Psychology G79.
All welcome.
Abstract: Motor representations live a kind of double life. Although they are paradigmatically involved in performing actions, they also occur in individuals who are not acting other than in observing others act and sometimes influence their thoughts about the goals of these actions. There is reason to suppose that these influences are content-respecting: what you think about an action sometimes depends in part on how that action is represented motorically in you. But the existence of such content-respecting influences is puzzling. After all, motor representations are inferentially isolated from thoughts. How could motor representations have content-respecting influences on thoughts despite their inferential isolation? The aim of the talk is to solve this puzzle . In so doing, I shall provide the basis for an account of how experience links the motoric with thought.
All welcome to attend.
CCR will host a major AHRC funded international network between the University of Reading and Peking University, China, during 2014-2016, on the topic of ‘Pervasive context-sensitivity in natural language’. The project will look at the extent of context-sensitivity in language, what theoretical models are best suited to accommodating context-sensitivity, the effect of context-sensitivity on the understanding of those with cognitive impairments, and the relationship between artificial linguistic modelling and context-sensitivity. Further details will follow on this site, but if you are interested in being involved in the project please email Emma Borg (e.g.n.borg@reading.ac.uk).
