Programme

	Tuesday, Dec. 4	Wednesday, Dec. 5	Thursday, Dec. 6
09:00-10:00		C. Chevallier: Beyond Theory of Mind: Autism as a failure to see others as partners for interaction	M. Poulsen: Who do you think did what to whom? Processing of long-distance dependencies
10:00-10:30	Intro	Coffee
10:30-12:00	P. Hagoort: Neuropragmatics	U. Frith: What can we learn from autism about communication?	D. Wilson: Pragmatic processes and metarepresentational abilities: The case of verbal irony
12:00-13:00	Lunch
13:00-14:30	O. Mascaro & D. Sperber: Mentalisation, communication and epistemic vigilance in an evolutionary and developmental perspective	V. Bambini: Pragmatics and the Brain: A Metaphorical Window	C. Frith: Closing the loop: How brains communicate
14:30-15:00	Coffee
15:00-16:00	M. Wallentin: Accessing the mental space: Working memory during language processing	K.R. Christensen: At the interface: Syntactic structure, Interpretation, and the Brain	A. Roepstorff: Brief summary Panel discussion

Abstracts

Peter Hagoort: Neuropragmatics
In this paper I will discuss the classical opposition between the core aspects of language, such as lexical retrieval, syntax and semantics versus the embedding of language in its user context (pragmatics). Evidence from ERPs and fMRI will be discussed that shows that this opposition needs correction. Language is pragmatically grounded all the way. Discourse, the visual world, information about the world in memory all play their role immediately in establishing an interpetation of the incoming utterance. Language processing is just as good enough as is required by the pragmatics of the situation. fMRI results that both left and right inferior frontal cortices play an important role in pragmatic binding.
Olivier Mascaro & Dan Sperber: Mentalisation, communication and epistemic vigilance in an evolutionary and developmental perspective.

With new experimental evidence suggesting higher mentalizing abilities in infants than was previously assumed, the robust findings showing that children pass the standard False Belief Task at about four years of age call for a reinterpretation both from an evolutionary and a developmental point of view. This can best be done, we suggest, by considering not just the development of mentalization but also that of communication and that of ‘epistemic vigilance’ (on which we present novel experimental evidence).
Mikkel Wallentin: Accessing the mental space: Working memory during language processing.

Working memory (WM) research traditionally distinguishes between separable linguistic and a visuospatial WM systems. Cognitive linguistics, however, operate from the assumption of overlapping systems where language evoke simulations of real percepts, and many studies show how language profoundly modifies the structuring of spatial cognition. This talk presents investigations of the neural underpinnings of the interface between language and spatial perception. I present data showing that recall of both spatial aspects of images and of sentences call an the same posterior/frontal network of brain regions, primarily the precuneus. Detailed analyses also reveal a role for the frontal eye-fields in shifts of spatial perspective within working memory. This is interpreted in a simulation framework with mock eye movements evoking imagined shifts of perspective.
Coralie Chevallier: Beyond Theory of Mind: Autism as a failure to see others as partners for interaction

(t.b.a.)
Uta Frith: What can we learn from autism about communication?

Autism is an invaluable model to explore what is special about human communication. Autism provides evidence for at least two types of communication, one, a faithful transmission of signals from one mind to another, the other a vehicle for changing the mind of others. Experiments using conditions that contrast these two forms of communication have shown that in autism, the former is intact, but the latter is impaired. The impairment has been shown to be due to a severe delay in the development of mentalizing ability. This delay suggests a missing neuro-cognitive start-up kit that has been postulated to explain fast-track learning of language in the normally developing child.

Neuroimaging experiments have used the contrast between situations that require mentalizing and those that do not, to reveal a dedicated network. These experiments have also shown that people with high functioning autism or Asperger syndrome who have learned to use mental state reasoning, show reduced activation in this network. Further, the mentalizing network has weaker connectivity than normal. When able people with an autism spectrum condition are asked to talk about their own inner states or about the inner states of others, they give thin and scanty replies, indicating that mentalizing has not become a spontaneous activity, and is not the same as the spontaneous mentalizing in normal adults. This may suggest a third type of communication, which is notably egocentric and represents a highly transparent type of mind manipulation.
Valentina Bambini: Pragmatics and the Brain: A Metaphorical Window

The development of new methodologies for the functional exploration of the brain is leading to a radical revision of the language-brain relations. To say it with a metaphor, these methodologies have opened a new window on brain functioning. Advance in experimental design makes it feasible to explore the language-brain relations in ecologically plausible environments, taking into account the role of “context”, i.e. what linguists call “the pragmatic perspective”. The ecology of cognitive processes seems to be the new challenge for neuroscience. What are the neural basis of ecological linguistic processing, i.e., of pragmatics? Metaphor well illustrates the complexity of pragmatics, as as it is one of the possible uses of language, and its resolution depends upon the correct representation and integration of linguistic and extra-linguistic contextual factors. I will present data from two experiments aiming at identifying the spatio-temporal characterization of metaphor comprehension, realized with complementary methodologies, namely fMRI and ERP. Results show that metaphor recruits a widely and bilaterally distributed network, and its time course is differently modulated depending on the specific contextual coordinates. Provided with this evidence, we can venture in the attempt of characterizing the ‘faculty of language pragmatics’, which encompasses Chomskyan ‘faculty of language narrow’ and ‘faculty of language broad’, with the addition of an interface with the external environment.
Ken Ramshøj Christensen: At the interface: Syntactic structure, Interpretation, and the Brain.

A large number of studies of syntax and the brain, both aphasia studies and neuroimaging experiments, have shown that there is a correlation between phrasal movement (word-order variation) and activation in Brocas area. Some studies, however, have reported counterexamples to this correlation suggesting that the data should be accounted for with e.g. working memory or canonicity. Furthermore, several neuroimaging studies have reported Brocas area to be activated by semantic or pragmatic anomaly and implausibility.

I present data from a neuroimaging study using fMRI on pragmatic anomaly and two types of phrasal movement, namely, questions and negative clauses in Danish, which not only shows that syntactic processing of displaced constituents is implemented in the brain as a distributed network, but also shows a surprising pattern: Word order changes that involve the beginning of the clause activate Brocas area, whereas word order changes that involve the middle of the clause do not. In particular, at least in Danish, such operations involve the anterior temporal cortex. Crucially, pragmatic anomaly also increases activation in Brocas area. I shall argue that the seemingly mixed results and the counterexamples in the literature are merely apparent counterexamples and can be accounted for by taking linguistic theory seriously, and that the brain activations reported in the neurolinguistic literature reflect the interfacing between syntactic structure building and other cognitive systems, including information structure and pragmatics.
Mads Poulsen: Who do you think did what to whom? Processing of long-distance dependencies.
Many languages allow formation of dependencies across clause boundaries: "Who did you say that he admired". But how such dependencies can be set up is often constrained: "*Who did the he raise two million dollars by talking to". Attempts have been made to capture these constraints in quite different conceptual frameworks: as syntactic constraints on movement, as semantic constraints on event integration, as pragmatic constraints on information structure composition, or as processing constraints on working memory management. In this talk I concentrate on pragmatic and processing approaches. I present time-course data on Danish extraction that falsify certain pragmatic and processing approaches, but open up for new speculations on how pragmatically guided processing strategies might explain extraction constraints.
Deirdre Wilson: Pragmatic processes and metarepresentational abilities: The case of verbal irony
There is quite a lot of evidence from the developmental and neuropsychological literature that performance on different types of pragmatic task correlates with different orders of metarepresentational ability as revealed by standard False-Belief tasks. In particular, comprehension of verbal irony (e.g. “It’s a lovely day”, said in a downpour”) appears to require a higher order of metarepresentational ability than comprehension of ambiguous, metaphorical or referentially ambivalent utterances. Standard accounts of verbal irony as saying one thing and meaning (or implicating) the opposite shed no light on why this might be so. In this paper, I will consider two accounts which suggest more promising explanations. The first treats irony as an echoic use of language in which the speaker tacitly dissociates herself from an attributed utterance or thought. The second treats irony as a type of pretence in which the speaker “makes as if” to perform a certain speech act, expecting her audience to see through the pretence and recognise the mocking or critical attitude behind it. In the experimental literature, the two approaches have generally been seen as empirically or theoretically indistinguishable, and little effort has been made to compare and test their predictions. I will argue that the echoic and pretence accounts are distinguishable on both theoretical and empirical grounds, and that while echoic use is essential to standard cases of verbal irony, pretence is not.
Chris Frith: Closing the loop: How brains communicate.

We learn about the world and about each other from the many signals that we are constantly exchanging. Using these signals we can learn to avoid danger, locate something interesting and be on our guard against untrustworthy people. However, much of this signalling is automatic and unconscious. The signals can have their effect without either the sender or the receiver being aware of them. In contrast, communication depends upon a meta-cognitive process through which we become aware of signals as signals. Ostensive signals have an important role in this process since they indicate that what follows is a deliberate communication. Such deliberate communication has a critical role in teaching (as opposed to learning from observation). Such deliberate communication also requires that we ‘close the loop’. This is the meta-cognitive process by which we go beyond representing what the other person intends, and represent what the other person thinks we intend. Through such representations we can get inside each other’s heads.