UTism 2020

The ninth University of Toronto Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Mind (UTism) is taking place this weekend (February 1-2). Please note that registration is required. The theme is 'Vision and visual perception: How does vision affect cognition?'. Of special note when it comes to linguistics is the invited talk by Corrine Occhino (Rochester Institute of Technology): "Embodied cognition, visual language, and the emergence of form":

Vision and visual schematization have an important role to play in conceptualization and in the creation of grammatical structure. Following the embodied turn in cognitive science, we see spoken language and written language as inextricably anchored to the visual modality. In this talk I will argue that signers and signed languages offer a unique look into cognition when the primary sensory mode of experience unfolds in the visual modality. Looking at language processing in American Sign Language (ASL), we find that tasks which do not require overt semantic processing nevertheless are influenced by meaningful, 'visually iconic' aspects of signs. My work on iconicity in the visual modality has shown that while iconicity can impact processing, it interacts with several experiential factors including language proficiency and socio-cultural experience. How can these findings from studies on the role of iconicity in signed language processing be reconciled within a larger, psychologically plausible framework of language and cognition? I will conclude my talk by discussing the mechanisms underlying findings from embodied and situated language processing and the findings presented on iconicity effects in signed language processing. I argue that the key to bringing research on signed languages and spoken languages together is to recognize that language users visualize scenes to make sense of the language that they process. Understanding the interaction between language users’ experiences and the multimodality of the linguistic signal will be important factors to consider as we investigate the role of vision in the emergence of linguistic structure.