HUD Colloquium Fall 2023 Presents: Language and Quantification - An Exploration of the Language-Cognition Interface

The Human Development Brown Bag/Colloquium Series Presents:

Dr. Peter Gordon

Associate Professor of Neuroscience and Education

Department of Biobehavioral Sciences and Human Development

Teachers College, Columbia University

"Language and Quantification: An Exploration of the Language-Cognition Interface"

In this talk I will outline several studies that have driven consistent themes throughout my career, from my undergraduate thesis to the present.  A consistent theme across these studies ] relates to how language affects human cognition in both development and representation.  I take quantification as a case study of this interface, whether it be in the form of learning the meanings of quantifiers like more, less, some, many or understanding plurals and their role in word formation and the count/mass distinction in language. I explore understanding numerical cognition and quantification in many contexts and methodologies, from developmental and cross-cultural perspectives to the representation of numerical quantities in the brain.  The aim of this talk will be to provide a flavor of how the basic mental act of individuation permeates the language-cognition interface and how this provides an extraordinarily rich, unexpectedly varied, and complex domain for studying the human mind.