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Comment by randall | Hacker News Reader

Another researcher thinks effects like this are due to language in humans. (Maybe not directly linked, but somewhat related)

Basically the experiment was to have a rectangular room with 4 white walls, and then another box with one blue wall.

Researchers put some food in the room to the left of the blue wall, showed it to a rat, then spun the rat around, and the rat got it right 50% of the time. (IE random chance.)

Researchers did the same experiment with kids, and kids under 6 failed every time. Though after age 6, kids start using spacial language and can say the phrase "left of the blue wall", which implies to the researcher we use language to connect different disparate parts of the brain.

More on this during this radiolab episode: http://www.radiolab.org/story/91725-words/

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>which implies to the researcher we use language to connect different disparate parts of the brain

I've always felt this was the case in my own mind. Language is the serialization format for abstract concepts.

This is why I'm very interested in constructed languages. I think it might help human cognition if we had a more efficient serialization format for internal concept transport.

> Language is the serialization format for abstract concepts.

Woa nice! Good analogy. Will steal.

it's a definition, not an analogy.

language is just our best tool for sharing feelings, concepts, etc. funny to think it's (probably) ultimately not the best tool for that. :)

Not that I disagree with your point, but I don't think spoken/written language is our best tool for sharing feelings. I'd say body-language is better for that. Or certain forms of art (such as visual art or music). All forms of communication, obviously.

Language probably is our best way of communicating abstract concepts, however (now, are feelings abstract or concrete? ;-).

if your definition of "feelings" stops at "happy" and "sad", sure. but feelings quickly become too complicated to express without language.

example: i want to go out to dinner tonight, but i feel like we went out to dinner too many times this week.

example: i am happy that the Yankees won, but i am unhappy with Derek Jeter's performance.

communicating these feelings clearly will, without better technology, require words.

more importantly, interpreting body language is simply prone to error. assuming two honest parties, it is much harder to misinterpret words.

That's not quite how I meant to use the word feeling above; I'd characterise what you describe as sentiment. I suppose I might have used the term emotion rather than feeling.

you're right, feelings seems like a mischaracterization on my part. in that case i agree body language is can be a better tool for communicating feeling than verbal language.

not to take this off the deep end, but i'll try to clarify my point.

language (body or verbal) is just our current best attempt at getting your brain to feel what my brain feels (feelings, sentiments, concepts, anything). my hunch they are both terribly insufficient compared to some technology we may be able to develop in the future.

that is, why serialize the data at all? a literal data transfer seems more reliable. for now, it's because we have no other choice.

Well, it is 'a sentence is a formatted thought' from a different angle.

> Language is the serialization format for abstract concepts.

For you maybe, but some people work with images only and most people use a mix of language and images. Autistic people tend to work exclusively with images, or exclusively with words. Some also use music or numbers. You don't need to speak any audible language to invent or understand things. Your own internal language is enough. You'll just be so isolated that you're unlikely to be understood by the masses, that's all.

Whether or not autistic people use imagery is irrelevant, he said "language is the serialization," not "for everybody the only way they think of abstract concepts is via serialization with language."

> > Language is the serialization format for abstract concepts.

> For you maybe, but some people work with images only and most people use a mix of language and images.

There must be some variation across the population in this regard (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5256057). Though I can think in images, concepts, words, sounds, smells, and tastes, I've said before on HN that my thoughts don't seem "official" until they've been serialized as a stream of words (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5256126).

> This is why I'm very interested in constructed languages

xu do kakne bacru la jbobau

No, but it's cool how I was able to find a mechanical parser (not something based on machine learning) that translated that for me.

I might learn it in the future.

> Researchers did the same experiment with kids, > and kids under 6 failed every time.

How can this be??? If they didn't have the ability to keep track of which way was which, shouldn't they have failed 50% of the time, like the rats?

I think this should be read as "kids under 6 failed [to perform better than chance] every time"

Correct. My bad. They acted just like the rats.

I heard during AI Class (6.034 w/Patrick Winston) that the same experiment was repeated with adults but they had to say some pre-determined words the whole time, and they regressed back to the level of pre-6 year olds.

Speech uses the same part of the brain as thought apparently, so making someone say words prevents them from thinking during that time.

they had to say some pre-determined words the whole time, and they regressed back to the level of pre-6 year olds

Only slightly related, but this is why I listen to audiobooks every night to fall to sleep. If I'm listening to someone else, I almost literally can't "think" so my brain chatter is basically eradicated and I fall asleep. I know it's not the same for everyone, but I basically turn into a mindless automaton if I'm actively listening to someone else as I'm an extremely verbal thinker.

This must be why I find it so difficult to talk to people about important things. If you explain something to me verbally, I will not get it. I will hear you, and I will listen intently, and I will have no idea what you just said.

Not that I wouldn't know what you said, but I won't have a deep understanding, I won't be able to use what you said to get work done. This is especially bad with phone conversations.

But if you write it down, then we're talking. I can digest written stuff extremely well.

Interesting, I often wonder in these kinds of cases whether that implies that Kitty, the best crow, has the equivalent of an internal language or symbolic logic that they're using to frame these ideas? Also, if provided with an easy way to interact with human language, would they be able to develop / learn concepts like grammatical structure, or always be limited to simple relationships like "Red = Food"? Would their reasoning ability improve if provided with such a language framework?

[just your first question] I don't think it necessarily implies an internal language, as crows, not being mammals, have a different brain structure. Specifically, they lack a neocortex. They instead have an independently evolved higher brain structure called a hyperpallium. Corvids (including crows) have the largest of these, amongst birds. Kinda, the apes of the bird world.

So it's possible the relevant processing centers are not separate in them, as they are in mammals, and do not need an internal language to bridge them. Therefore, while it's possible they do have the same problem and solution as us, this experiment doesn't imply it.

I wonder if there's a way to test which it is? e.g. something analogous the interfering with this internal language in humans that a commentor mentioned.

There is a culture in africa for which the concept of relative direction doesn't exist. How would they perform at this test?

I believe the cultures in question know which way is North at all times, so this would be super easy for them, because the absolute position of an object that doesn't move never changes.

Reread parent. The person is spun around so they can't know absolute directions.

When they are first shown the room, they would think to themselves "the food is north of the blue wall". After being spun around they might not know which way is north, but they'll figure it out as soon as they spot the blue wall.

But what would happen if the researcher spun around the room as well?

Then their sense of "north" would become decoupled from true geographical north, but would still suffice for navigation within the current reference frame.

What kind of magical thinking leads people to accept these anthropological legends unquestioningly? 'there's a tribe who have no concept of left and right but always know which way is North' 'There's a tribe which has no concept of numbers greater than four but understands logarithms'...

What makes you think people accept it unquestioningly? There's plenty of evidence: http://pages.ucsd.edu/~jhaviland/Publications/ETHOSw.Diags.p...

You're actually demonstrating my point. That study is about an actualy Australian Aboriginal group, but the above commenters talk about nameless tribes in Africa. This is a common pattern in folk-anthropology where genuine cultural findings from field studies get overinterpreted, confused with other studies, elaborated and mythologized to the point where members of mysterious hypothetical African tribes have superhuman abilities to always know which way is North.

In a linguistics course in college, this tribe was used as an example of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Supposedly, members who were taught English and spoke it well still had trouble with relative direction because their original language (and culture) didn't have the concept. I always liked the example even if I thought it was dubious. Very cool to hear that someone else can corroborate that and make it at least a shared anecdote.

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