The influence of social interaction on adults' conceptual and verbal learning

语言是由概念支撑的。概念是一种心理语义结构，它使我们能够对世界进行分类、识别和命名--它使我们能够识别一种会喵喵叫的皮毛小动物，并称之为猫。人类通过两种方式发展对世界的新概念表征：第一，通过直接的感官体验;第二，通过他人的语言。在发育过程中，语言主要基于感官信息，但到了成年期，这一次级语言过程占了语言学习的大部分。那么，我们如何从他人的语言中学习概念信息呢？语言学习如何与直接经验学习相结合？为了回答这些问题，我正在调查概念学习，因为它发生在社会上，通过面对面的互动。为此，我对言语与感官信息相互作用的方式感兴趣，（即所讨论的内容是否可以被身体感知），以及说话者和听众协调的社会行为（即他们的动作，手势，和非语言发声）来影响个体学习新概念的方式。受新兴的测量社会激活大脑的方法的影响，（有时被称为“第二人称”神经科学和心理学），我的研究将结合联合收割机的行为和电生理实验工作。与此同时，我将回顾概念学习的思想史，吸收关于这一主题的丰富的心理学和神经科学证据，同时追踪语言哲学和认知科学中的思想转变如何影响了过去世纪的概念和语言学习理论。

Language is underpinned by concepts. Concepts are the mental semantic structures that allow us to categorize, identify and name the world - what enables us to recognize a small animal with fur that meows, and call it a cat. Humans develop new conceptual representations of the world in two ways: first, by direct sensory experience; and second, from the language of others. During development, language is primarily grounded in sensory information, but by adulthood, this secondary linguistic process accounts for most language learning.How then do we learn conceptual information from others' language? And how does learning from language interface with learning from direct experience? In responding to these questions, I am investigating conceptual learning as it occurs socially, across face-to-face interactions. To this end, I am interested in the way that speech interacts with both sensory information (i.e. whether what is being discussed is physically perceptible), as well as speakers' and listeners' co-ordinated social behaviours (i.e. their movements, gestures, and non-verbal vocalizations) to influence how individuals learn new concepts.Influenced by burgeoning approaches to measuring the socially activated brain (sometimes referred to as 'second-person' neuroscience and psychology), my research will combine behavioural and electrophysiological experimental work. At the same time, I will look to review the history of thought on conceptual learning, taking in the rich body of psychological and neuroscientific evidence on the subject, while tracing how shifting ideas in philosophy of language and cognitive science have influenced theories of conceptual and linguistic learning over the past century.