Brain, Language, and Environment

Brain, Language, and Environment
Martin L. Albert and Lisa Tabor Connor
Harold Goodglass Aphasia Research Center, Department of Neurology, Boston University
School of Medicine and Research Service of the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical
Center, Boston; and Language in the Aging Brain Laboratory, Boston University
School of Medicine
and
Loraine K. Obler
Harold Goodglass Aphasia Research Center, Department of Neurology, Boston University
School of Medicine and Research Service of the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical
Center, Boston; Language in the Aging Brain Laboratory, Boston University School of
Medicine; and CUNY Graduate Center, Program in Speech and Hearing Sciences
Research results from seemingly unrelated domains are converging on an
aspect of human behavior that will be of critical interest to cognitive neuroscientists
in the next century: the intimate interaction of brain, language, and
environment. Our principal argument is that brain–language relations cannot
be fully understood absent an understanding of the reciprocal influences of
the environment on brain–language relations and brain–language relations
on the environment. We predict that future research in the cognitive neuroscience
of language will, of necessity, include this new domain of theoretical
relevance—the mutual influence, that is, the dynamic interaction, of the neurally
based rules of linguistic grammar and the neurally based rules of social
interaction, which we call the ‘‘social grammar.’’ The present paper provides
evidence from the following sources to support our prediction: language
learning, theory of mind, behavioral neurology, and sociolinguistics.
The most obvious example of the influence of environment on language
is in the learning of one’s first language. The social context in which one
learns a first language obviously influences what one learns 


children in English-speaking environments learn English; children in Japanese-
speaking environments learn Japanese.) Moreover the language context
interacts with brain development to set neural constraints on the ability to
comprehend and produce other languages. Werker et al. (1995) have noted
demonstrable loss in the ability to discriminate nonnative phonemic distinctions
as early as the first year of life. Furthermore, if a second language is
acquired after age 4, a limitation in the appreciation of aspects of that language’s
morphosyntax is evident by nonnative proficiency as an adult (Johnson
& Newport, 1989). Training can minimize such distinctions between
nonnative and native performance, however. For example, McCandliss and
colleagues (1999) have developed a program to enable Japanese speakers to
distinguish /l/ and /r/. That such training can be effective is further evidence
for the influence of environment on language.
Another set of examples of the mutual dependence of social behavior and
brain–language relations comes from research in the cognitive neuroscience
of ‘‘theory of mind.’’ Theory of mind refers to the ability to understand
someone else’s intent (Premack & Woodruff, 1978). Impairments in the ability
to produce or comprehend indirect requests, humor, sarcasm, or other
aspects of idiomatic or metaphoric language use, as can occur following right
hemispheric damage (Brownell et al., 1986), can seriously disrupt the ability
to understand a speaker’s intent, disturb normal social conversation, and interfere
with normal social interaction.
A dramatic clinical example of the intimate interaction of brain, language,
and environment comes from a different realm of behavioral analysis: a
single case study recently completed of an association between language
and the ‘‘environmental dependency’’ syndrome (Tanaka et al., 1999). The
environmental dependency syndrome refers to a peculiar pattern of actions
linked to frontal lobe dysfunction in which patients display an exaggerated
dependency on the environment for behavioral cues (Lhermitte, 1986). We
examined an 84-year-old woman with an acute left frontal lobe infarction
who entered the hospital with striking imitation behavior. After two weeks
her imitation behavior disappeared, but an equally striking new behavior
emerged. In the presence of others, she would call out the names of objects
in the room, and also call out the actions and gestures of people in the room,
even though she was not asked to do so, and even though she was asked to
stop. She appeared altogether unable to prevent herself from speaking aloud
in response to specific environmental cues.
The argument we are making in this paper, which we believe will find its
place in future research in the cognitive neuroscience of language, echoes
arguments made previously in Russian research. An extensive series of studies,
starting decades ago with Vygotsky and extending through Luria to
Bakhtin, elegantly summarized by Wertsch (1998), demonstrates how language
as a cultural tool influences expectations of social groups, ultimately
setting constraints on understanding...  

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