Thinking differently about thinking

For this week’s episode of Living Untitled, I sat down with Idan Blank, a psychologist and professor who specializes in psycholinguistics at UCLA. Psycholinguistics is the study of the cognitive mechanisms that allow people to learn and comprehend language, as well as the relationship between language and other complex cognitive abilities. In other words, how our brains learn, process and use language all throughout our lives.?

When I was first introduced to Idan, he explained the difference between his work and that of a sociolinguist by posing a few fundamental questions that each respectively are attempting to solve. One question in particular caught my eye–is language necessary for thinking? One of the things I find so fascinating about this question is how it opens the door to better understanding just how separate the mind and the body may truly be in many ways. And certainly for me, at least, just how limited my way of thinking about–well, thinking–might very well be.?

Many of us–probably most of us of a certain age–use some form of language to communicate with each other on a regular basis, likely taking the act entirely for granted. But there’s a crazy complex process going on in our brains and our bodies, both working in tandem, to make this happen. And maybe what’s even crazier is all of the other things our brains and bodies are capable of doing while producing and processing language all at the same time.?

Growing up in theatre, I was always telling myself one story in my head about my character, listening to the dialogue happening on the stage, reacting to it, speaking my lines to continue the conversation, singing and dancing as part of it–widely both recognized in many ways as their own language–and still somehow being aware of everything else that was happening and having mental space to think about what I’d do after the show that evening. And I’m the first to admit that at times, I probably took it for granted that everyone else on that stage and in that audience had their own way of thinking and communicating that looked entirely different from my own. How on earth is it even possible that we’re able to communicate with each other at all?

My conversation with Idan offered a fascinating playground for exploring these questions and ideas, and ultimately, made me appreciate the work that he and others like him do to help us better understand fundamental aspects of what makes us human. Science is all about big questions, which is what has always drawn me to the practice. But through posing and attempting to answer many of those big questions, we learn to appreciate our individual complexity that much more–and hopefully, learn to be a little more understanding of one another in the process.

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