The Act of Creation
Page 72
The concept may be a butterfly. It may be a person he has known. It may be an animal, a city, a type of action, or a quality. Each concept calls for a name. These names are wanted for what may be a noun or a verb, an adjective or an adverb. Concepts of this type have been formed gradually over the years from childhood on. Each time a thing is seen or heard or experienced, the individual has a perception of it. A part of that perception comes from his own concommittant interpretation. Each successive perception forms and probably alters the permanent concept. And words are acquired gradually, also, and deposited somehow in the treasure-house of word memory -- the cortico-thalamic speech mechanisms. Words are often acquired simultaneously with the concepts. . . . A little boy may first see a butterfly fluttering from flower to flower in a meadow. Later he sees them on the wing or in pictures, many times. On each occasion he adds to his conception of butterfly. It becomes a generalization from many particulars. He builds up a concept of a butterfly which he can remember and summon at will, although when he comes to manhood, perhaps, he can recollect none of the particular butterflies of past experience. The same is true of the sequence of sound that makes up a melody. He remembers it after he has forgotten each of the many times he heard or perhaps sang or played it. The same is true of colours. He acquires, quite quickly, the concept of lavender, although all the objects of which he saw the colour have faded beyond the frontier of voluntary recall. The same is true of the generalization he forms of an acquaintance. Later on he can summon his concept of the individual without recalling their many meetings. [8]
Thus the pre-verbal concepts of the child are formed by a series of operations continuous with those described in previous chapters: the de-particularization, filtering, and coding of percepts according to those of their common features which are relevant to a given conceptual hierarchy; the formation of colour- shape- and object-constancies; the development of sensory-motor skills such as the grasping of objects, bringing them close to the eye, visual and tactile exploration, etc.; lastly, according to Piaget's schema, the 'objectification' of space and time, the gradual separation of the self from the non-self, and the beginnings of the transition from magical to more objectified kinds of implied causality. Most of these processes can be found, to a greater or lesser degree, in animal learning; but with the addition of a verbal label, the concept acquires a new dimension as it were, and the continuity of the series of learning processes in animal and man is broken. No extrapolation is possible from the behaviour of the rat to that of man.
This can be demonstrated even in maze-learning experiments with humans, where the advantages of verbalization are not at once obvious. In a famous experiment by Warden [9] forty subjects were seated in front of a table with a grooved maze on it. The maze was of the same type as in rat experiments, with various cul-de-sacs; the subject had to thread his way through it with a stylus in his hand, by purely tactile guidance, for the maze was hidden from his view by a screen. The number of trials required until the maze was completely learned varied, according to subject, between 16 and 195 (!). At the end of the experiment each subject had to report whether he had memorized the maze by the 'feel' of it, that is by motor-kinesthetic imagery; or by making a 'visual map'; or by a verbal formula -- e.g. 'first left, third right, first right', etc.
The results were as follows: out of 60 subjects, 17 adopted the 'motor' method. These needed an average of 124 trials (ranging from 72 to 195 according to subject) to learn the maze. Eighteen adopted the 'visual' method; average trials: 68, ranging from 41 to 104. Twenty-five adopted the 'verbal' formula; average trials: 32, range: 16 to 62. Thus, in round figures, the visualizers learned twice as fast, the verbalizers four times as fast as the motor learners.
This reminds one of Otto Koehler's experiments (mentioned on p. 535 f.), which showed that clever jackdaws have a 'pre-linguistic number sense' almost equal to man's and are 'able to abstract the concept of numerical identity from groups of up to seven objects'; which 'suggests that many animals may have a prelinguistic counting ability of about the same degree, but that man's superiority in dealing with numbers lies in his ability to use, as symbols for numbers, words and figures'. [10] The dependence of counting and calculating abilities on verbal processes is further illustrated by Penfield's studies on aphasia, about which later.
Even voluntary movements (as opposed to automatized skills) seem to be to some extent dependent on guidance by internal verbalization. Some of Head's patients with speech disorders due to brain lesions were unable to imitate correctly Head's gestures -- such as touching an eye or an ear with the left or right hand -- while they were sitting face to face with Head; but had no difficulty in doing so if standing in front of a mirror with Head standing behind them. In the mirror test, of course, the task is reduced to pure imitation, whereas sitting opposite the experimenter 'left' and 'right' are reversed and the patient cannot see himself:
When the patient sitting opposite to me attempts to imitate movements of my right or left hand brought into contact with one or other eye or ear, internal verbalization occurs at a phase of the normal act. No word may be uttered, but the words "right" and "left", "eye "and "ear", are essential to correct imitation of this kind. For the same reason these patients may find considerable difficulty in carrying out the hand, eye, and ear tests when the command is pictorial (given by a drawing on a printed card) although they can execute them correctly when asked to do so by word of mouth (or even by printed command). Their difficulty is in evoking the words they require, and the verbal command supplies the necessary want.' [11]
Thus Head's patients, with their impaired command of words, were virtually reduced from the level of the verbalizers to that of the motor-learners in Warden's maze experiment. We must conclude that verbal symbolism enters even into the learning of complex motor skills -- just as it provides the mortar for holding together complex visual pseudo-images (p. 531 ff.).
Ideation and Verbalization
Owing to the immense benefits derived from verbalization, the verbal symbol, which at the dawn of symbol-consciousness was at first no more than a label attached to a pre-existing conceptual schema, soon becomes its focal member, its centre of gravity, as it were. As words are the most convenient and economical means not only of communication but also of internal discourse, they soon assume a central role in the child's mental life, whereas images and other forms of unverbalized thought are gradually pushed towards the periphery, the fringes of awareness, or sink slowly down below its surface.
This tendency of verbal thinking to dominate and monopolize consciousness has its blessings and its curses, though the latter are less obvious than the former. Some of the dangers of thought becoming enslaved to words have been discussed in Book One, VII. Woodworth's remark, 'often we have to get away from speech in order to think clearly' [12] was seen to apply to a wide range of creative activities -- from mathematics and physics to philosophy, and there is no need to labour the point further. What needs stressing once more is that words are symbols for perceptual and cognitive events, but they are not the events. They are vehicles of thought, but the vehicle should not be confused with the passengers.
Let me recapitulate. (1) The child has formed a variety of pre-verbal concepts of persons, objects, and recurrent events to which later verbal symbols become attached as labels; without the previously existing person-concept, the symbol 'Mama' would have nothing to refer to; it would remain meaningless -- an empty vehicle without passenger. (2) At a later stage, the word and the concept may be acquired simultaneously: 'Mummy, what does SEDUCTRESS mean?' 'A very bad woman who uses too much make-up.' (3) The concept 'seductress' will undergo drastic changes during adolescence and later years; the word SEDUCTRESS remains unchanged. It is a vehicle with a fixed, immutable structure; whereas the passengers are constantly changing, getting in and out of the bus. We may even distinguish between passengers of first and second class: trim denotations, furtive connotations, and stow-aways hidden under the seats. Dr. Watson's s
uggestion that the passengers themselves are subliminal omnibuses was not a helpful one. (4) The word SEDUCTRESS refers to different concepts in different people. (5) The word which is attached to a concept may become detached from it, leaving the concept more or less unimpaired. This last point needs elaboration.
One may of course forget the name of a person without forgetting the person, i.e. without losing one's concept of him or her. But does the same apply when the word refers to an abstract concept?
A certain class of Head's aphasic patients confused the names of numbers, but nevertheless carried out the correct numerical operations. The patient would call a card 'nine of hearts' when he meant 'seven of hearts', and yet play a correct game. On doing a multiplication he would say aloud 'seven nines are fifty-six' and yet write down '63' correctly. This shows that his number-concepts remained intact, although he attached the wrong verbal labels to them; he probably catalogued them by their visual labels (the written figures), but this did not impair the efficiency of his symbolic operations. The trouble of the jackdaw is not that it cannot attach verbal symbols to its number-concepts, but that it cannot symbolize them in any other way either. One has only to think of deaf-mutes to remind one that a symbolic language is not necessarily an auditory-vocal language.*
The clinical phenomena of aphasia are frequently open to more than one interpretation; but on the particular point under discussion this is not the case. After surveying the literature on the subject, Humphreys [13] concluded: 'the general argument from aphasia for the independence of thought and language seems, on reading the evidence, overwhelmingly strong'. ('Independence' manifested in pathological cases does not, of course, prevent interaction under normal conditions.)
More recently, Penfield and Roberts, reviewing the literature and their own case histories, came to the same conclusion: 'It is obvious that in many cases the aphasic patient is able to perceive accurately. He knows what an object is used for; he recognizes it. He must, therefore, be able to draw upon his store of recorded experience. He is still able to record his new experience of things heard and seen, and to compare the new experience with the whole of his past similar experiences. Thus his capairy to perceive through other channels than the sound and form of words is preserved.' [14]
Particularly impressive is the evidence from temporary aphasia induced by electrical stimulation of the cortical speech areas of the conscious and consenting patient. Penfield's usual method was to show the patient an object printed on a card and ask him to name it, while the low-voltage electrode was applied to various points of the cortex: 'The patient may remain silent, or he may use words to explain that he cannot name the object, or he may misname it. He may show perseveration.' [15]
A typical case is the following (italics in the original):
When the electrode was applied to the supramarginal gyrus at point 27, he said: 'I know what it is', and was silent. When the electrode was withdrawn, he said at once, 'tree', which was correct. When the electrode was applied to the posterior temporal region at 28, he was completely silent. A little time after the electrode was withdrawn, he exclaimed suddenly: 'Now I can talk -- butterfly [which was correct]. I couldn't get that word "butterfly" and then I tried to get the word "moth". . . .' The speech mechanism was separately paralysed, and yet the man could understand what he saw and could substitute the concept, moth, for the concept butterfly, in a reasoned attempt to regain control of the speech mechanism, by presenting to it a new idea, moth. He could also snap his fingers (as he did) in exasperation at his failure.
The words of C.H. [the patient] bring us face to face with other brain mechanisms. The concept of a moth, as distinguished from a butterfly, must also depend on a brain mechanism -- a mechanism capable of functioning when the speech mechanism is selectively paralysed -- a mechanism that stores something derived from the past. . . . [16]
Dropping the terminology of physiology for the moment, I may say that the patient presented the concept of a 'butterfly' to his speech mechanism, expecting that the word for it would be forthcoming. When the mechanism failed him, he cast about and selected an analogous concept from his storehouse of concepts and presented that to the speech mechanism. But again he was disappointed, and he snapped his fingers in exasperation. He could still express himself emotionally with his fingers in that way, although he would probably not have been able to write the lost words.*
Penfield concludes that there exists a 'conceptual mechanism' in the brain, and a 'speech mechanism' which is structurally separate, and functionally separable from the former.
We have seen that a considerable portion of mental activities is of a non-verbal character -- in the nature of experiences which 'cannot be put into words', which remain incommunicable and inarticulate, and nevertheless play an important, sometimes even a dominant, part in a person's life. We now see that even in articulate verbal thinking, a distinction must be drawn between the ideational process and its conversion into verbal currency. I have quoted some of the clinical evidence; there is also a vast body of experimental evidence reviewed, e.g. by Humphrey (1951). [17] Among the most convincing results are those which emerged from factor analysis (Burt, 1949).*
Everyday experience points in the same direction. In states of fatigue one may read every word of a printed paragraph without understanding 'a single word of it'. And vice versa: every experienced lecturer knows that one's thoughts may race ahead, or go astray, while one goes on talking -- as if talking were an automatized and autonomous skill like the typist's who 'copies behind'. More precisely, the lecturer converts into verbal currency cognitive sub-wholes on lower levels of the hierarchy, which have already been portioned out or 'pre-chewed' by the ideational process proceeding on the higher level.
We may safely conclude, then, with Humphrey: ' Clinical, experimental, and factorial results agree that language cannot be equated with thinking. Language is ordinarily of great assistance in thinking. It may also be a hindrance.'
NOTES
To p. 594. Excerpt from the textbook Psychology, ed. A. D. Calvin (Boston, 1961), Section Four: 'Learning, Retention and Motivation' by F. J. McGuigan:
The experimental data that we have presented . . . have been limited to rather simple responses such as salivation and bar-pressing. In our everyday life we seldom spend much time in thinking about such isolated responses, usually thinking of more gross activities, such as learning a poem, carrying on a conversation, solving a mechanical puzzle, learning our way around a new city, to name only a few. While the psychologist could study these more complicated activities, as is done to some extent, the general approach of psychology is to bring simpler responses into the laboratory for study. Once the psychologist discovers the principles of learning for simpler phenomena under the more ideal conditions of the laboratory [sic], it is likely that he can apply these principles to the more complex activities as they occur in everyday life. The more complex phenomena are, after all, nothing but a series of simpler responses. Speaking to a friend is a good example of this. Suppose we have a conversation such as the following: He: 'What time is it?' She: 'Twelve o'clock.' He: 'Thank you.' She: 'Don't mention it,' He: 'How about lunch?' She: 'Fine.' Now this conversation can be analysed into separate S.-R. units. 'He' makes the first response, which is emitted probably to the stimulus of the sight of 'She'. When 'He' emits the operant, 'What time is it?', the muscular activity, of course, produces a sound, which also serves as a stimulus for 'She'. On the receipt of this stimulus, she emits an operant herself: 'Twelve o'clock', which in turn produces a stimulus to 'He'. And so on. . . . In such a complex activity, then, we can see that what we really have is a series of S.-R. connections. The phenomenon of connecting a series of such S.-R. units is known as "chaining", a process that should be apparent in any complex activity. We might note that there are a number of sources of reinforcement throughout the chaining process, in this example the most obvious being the reinforcement of 'She' by receiving an invitation for lunch and of 'He' by having the in
vitation accepted. In addition, as Keller and Schoenfeld point out, there are such sources of reinforcement as the hearer 'encouraging' the speaker to continue, the use that the conversationalists make of the information received (he finds out what time it is), etc. This example of the analysis of a complex activity is but one of numerous possibiliti,es that we could discuss. You should continue to think of others yourself and try to diagram the chaining process for them . . . (p. 375).
To p. 595. It is interesting to note that Hebb, an enlightened behaviourist yet a behaviourist, considers as the chief advantages of language that words can be used in varying combinations: 'In man . . . we also have a kind of behaviour, which, as far as we know, does not occur in any other species. This is language. It includes sign language as well as spoken and written words; and the chief problem does not concern the ability to make the sounds of human speech, since lower animals are not capable of sign language either. What puts language on a higher level than the purposive communication of dog or chimpanzee is the varied combination of the same signs (words, pictures, gestures) for different purposes. . . . The criteria of language are then: (1) that it is usually purposive communication (though a number of non-purposive uses is common also, as in talking to oneself), and (2) that two or more items of the behaviour are combined in one way for one purpose and recombined for other purposes' (Hebb, 1958, p. 209; his italics).