Psychologists among Guggenheim winners

By Tom Nugent

Two psychologists who have done ground-breaking research in neuroscience, and a linguist who specializes in the psychological dynamics involved in shaping new concepts were among the 168 winners of this year?s Guggenheim Fellowships.

Chosen from among 3,014 nominees, the 1998 Guggenheim winners will divide more than $5.3 million in awards. The grants are designed to promote 'creation in any of the arts' and 'research in any field of knowledge.'

This year?s winners included Harvard University psychology professor Daniel L. Schacter, PhD, who has written extensively about the neurological basis for memory; McGill University psychologist Laura-Ann Petitto, PhD, who has studied the neurological processes involved in language development among infants; and University of California at San Diego cognitive science professor Giles Fauconnier, PhD, an expert on how the mind shapes new concepts from stored information.

Memory and the brain

After more than two decades of exploring the frontiers of human memory, Schacter admits to an 'enduring fascination' with challenging questions such as these: Where does human memory reside? Do our recollections of the past emerge from 'neural networks' located in several different areas of the brain, as many researchers now believe? And why is memory so often inaccurate as to specific details?even though it usually works quite effectively to preserve the general meaning and emotional impact of past events?

The author of a recent, widely praised book on the dynamics involved in human recall ('Searching For Memory: the Brain, the Mind and the Past,' Basic Books, 1996), Schacter is probably best known for his clinical studies of brain-damaged and amnesiac patients. They reinforced his thesis that memory is not a 'single faculty' but actually operates through a variety of systems linked to different networks of brain structures.

The 45-year-old chairman of the Harvard psychology department says that he first became interested in the physiology of memory while working with mental patients suffering from memory disorders as an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina.

'I was immediately hooked by the profound consequences of memory loss,' says Schacter. 'So I decided then I needed to get a background in basic memory processes in graduate school.'

Schacter originally enrolled at UNC with hopes of athletic stardom. 'I was a pretty good golfer in high school,' he chuckles, 'and I had dreams of greatness. I think at one point?this was during my most self-delusional period?I even thought I might become a pro golfer!'

After recovering from the delusion, Schacter went on to earn his PhD in psychology at the University of Toronto (1981) and to teaching stints there and at the University of Arizona, before joining the Harvard faculty in 1991. Along the way, he gained national attention by publishing influential studies based on his neuropsychological analyses of amnesia, 'explicit-versus-implicit' memory, and brain mechanisms involved in memory distortion. In recent years, his research and his extensive writings have made him a central figure in the ongoing national debate over such controversial subjects as 'recovered' and 'false' memory.

How will Schacter use his Guggenheim Fellowship? 'I?m going to get a reprieve from being department chair!' he says with a laugh. 'Fortunately, the fellowship will allow me to spend the next year working on a book about ?constructive aspects? of memory and the brain.

While his last book covered all aspects of memory, he says 'now I think the time is right for a much more focused book that will try to understand such things as memory distortions and illusions from a cognitive-neuroscience perspective.'

Language acquisition

After more than 20 years of research aimed at 'discovering the biological mechanisms that determine how our species acquires language,' Petitto says she?s closing in on her target: an 'island of tissue' in the brain that may trigger language development in infants.

'What I have argued is that we might have a brain-based mechanism that thrusts newborn children into the right ?attentional space? that allows them to attend to the patterns of natural language that are all around them,' says Pettito. 'I and my colleagues believe that the mechanism may be located in the superior temple gyrus?and that it works as a kind of ?mental booster rocket? in the process of language acquisition.'

A neuroscientist who has used positron emission tomography (PET) and MRI technology to study 'substrates in the brain underlying language representation and use,' Petitto suspects that the island of tissue in the gyrus (and especially the gyrus-site located near the left ear) may serve as a 'kind of generator?the motor that starts the process of learning language.'

According to Petitto, who has been praised for her 'dramatic discoveries' by MIT linguistics expert Noam Chomsky, PhD, pinning down the location of the 'booster' could provide new insights in the quest to understand exactly how children learn language.

How does the booster actually work? Petitto believes that a supersensitive 'strip of cells' in the gyrus may respond to repetitive patterns in language. By focusing on these patterns, the booster alerts other areas of the infant?s brain to pay special attention to language. Interestingly, however, the strip of cells isn?t keyed exclusively to sound. Petitto?s experiments show that children who are learning sign language also benefit from the booster?s keen ability to recognize repetitive patterns among the basic elements of these soundless languages.

Petitto believes that the potential benefits of mapping the language 'booster rocket' are substantial. 'If we can fully understand the nature of this mechanism, we?ll get useful insights into what happens when it goes wrong,' she says. 'And that could be very important in helping children with many types of language impairments.'

A native New Yorker whose research in language acquisition began during her student years at Columbia and Harvard, Petitto has published widely on subjects ranging from the physiological dynamics of human sign language to communication among chimpanzees.

Petitto plans to use her award to work and write next year at the San Raffaele Institute in Milan, where she will continue her studies in neuroanatomy.

Dissecting a metaphor

Giles Fauconnier has spent the past 20 years mapping what he calls 'mental spaces' where something called 'conceptual blending' takes place. This, he explains, is the mental process that allows the human mind to synthesize new meanings from stored information.

During a distinguished scientific career, he has written often about the 'staggering complexity' of the mental operations that are required to shape new ideas.

'Behind everything we do?and particularly behind language?there?s an extraordinary amount of what I would call ?backstage cognition,?' says Fauconnier, who holds doctorates in both linguistics and semantics.

'I?m fascinated by the way the mind sets up these mental spaces in which different inputs can be blended together to form entirely new concepts.'

A good example, he says, is ordinary metaphor. 'If you look at a phrase like, ?They are digging their financial grave,? you see that there is a projection of one input of ?gravedigging? and another input of ?financial investment.? But the central inference of the metaphor isn?t contained in either input; it?s actually constructed in the blend. Through completion and elaboration, the blend develops structure not provided by the inputs ? and I think that?s a powerful example of the mind?s ability to construct meaning through conceptual integration.'

As a semanticist who was heavily influenced by famed semiologist Roland Barthes while studying at the Ecole Polytech-nique in Paris, Fauconnier is credited with having developed the 'mental-spaces framework' for analyzing problems in both linguistics and discourse theory, starting back in the mid-1980s.

The author or co-author of several books and many articles on how the mind constructs meaning by blending mental inputs into new configurations, he has frequently teamed up with literary analyst Mark Turner of the University of Maryland to investigate such topics as 'The Role of Metonymy in Conceptual Integration' and 'Backstage Cognition in Reason and Choice.'

Fauconnier says he?ll use his Guggenheim funds to continue research on the 'mental spaces' in which conceptual blending takes place.

'In the last 20 years, I think a lot of people have realized that metaphor is fundamental?not just to literary language, but to everyday thinking,' he says.

'We?re using metaphor all the time, whenever we talk about things like time, space, love and so on. And yet we?re so used to doing it, that we find the process quite ordinary.

'But the cognitive capacity that allows us to construct new meanings through this kind of conceptual blending is actually quite fantastic.'

Tom Nugent is a writer in Baltimore.