The ideomotor recycling theory for tool use, language, and foresight

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• 作者：Arnaud Badets ; François Osiurak
• 关键词：Language ; Foresight ; Tool use ; Neuronal recycling ; Ideomotor mechanism
• 刊名：Experimental Brain Research
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：February 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：235
• 期：2
• 页码：365-377
• 全文大小：
• 刊物类别：Biomedical and Life Sciences
• 刊物主题：Neurosciences; Neurology;
• 出版者：Springer Berlin Heidelberg
• ISSN：1432-1106
• 卷排序：235

文摘

The present theoretical framework highlights a common action–perception mechanism for tool use, spoken language, and foresight capacity. On the one hand, it has been suggested that human language and the capacity to envision the future (i.e. foresight) have, from an evolutionary viewpoint, developed mutually along with the pressure of tool use. This co-evolution has afforded humans an evident survival advantage in the animal kingdom because language can help to refine the representation of future scenarios, which in turn can help to encourage or discourage engagement in appropriate and efficient behaviours. On the other hand, recent assumptions regarding the evolution of the brain have capitalized on the concept of “neuronal recycling”. In the domain of cognitive neuroscience, neuronal recycling means that during evolution, some neuronal areas and cognitive functions have been recycled to manage new environmental and social constraints. In the present article, we propose that the co-evolution of tool use, language, and foresight represents a suitable example of such functional recycling throughout a well-defined common action–perception mechanism, i.e. the ideomotor mechanism. This ideomotor account is discussed in light of different future ontogenetic and phylogenetic perspectives.