Jan 17 2010
What Is In a Word: Hammer, Drug Abuser, Atheist
Words are important. How often do you go a full day without using one, in thought or speech? Do you ever go a waking hour completely free of words?
Two bits of research on words and how we use them caught my attention this past week.
1. Carnegie Mellon scientists crack brain’s codes for noun meanings
Noun meanings? We have dictionaries for that, don’t we? Yes, but what the researchers we’re looking at was the neurological equivalent of the overt meaning.
By combining brain imaging and machine learning techniques, neuroscientists Marcel Just and Vladimir Cherkassky and computer scientists Tom Mitchell and Sandesh Aryal determined how the brain arranges noun representations.
A couple decades ago I studied cognition and emotion in grad school. Since then I have realized that “thoughts” can be better understood not as single elements in the brain, but as schemata, each with a number of varied elements, only some of them conscious: semantic, emotional, social, even kinesthetic (relating to movement). For example, one person’s schema for “dog” could have elements including the intellectual element of “creature with four legs and a tail”; the emotional element of a happy anticipation of interacting with it; and a kinesthetic component of “petting motion.”
When struggling to retrieve a word we know — darn, it’s on the tip of my tongue! — we will sometimes successfully access it via one part of the schema, on other times via another. Give me a synonym….Nope, still can’t remember. What about a word that rhymes with it? Maybe if I go through the motions of saying it — it begins with a “b,” I think….buh….buh…buh…? No luck.
The researchers into this brain “code” were able to discover how types of words activated disparate areas of the brain.
In the case of hammer, the motor cortex was the brain area activated to code the physical interaction. “To the brain, a key part of the meaning of hammer is how you hold it, and it is the sensory-motor cortex that represents ‘hammer holding,’” said Cherkassky, who has a background in both computer science and neuroscience. [bold mine]
Interesting.
2. Words used to describe substance-use patients can alter attitudes, contribute to stigma.
The schema elements that conventionally come along with a word are important, whether or not we intend that all of those elements be in play.
The authors of this second study mention that we refer to people with “food issues” as having an “eating disorder” and not as “food abusers.” Their study focused on people with alcohol and drug “issues,” and how the words used to label/describe them makes a difference. How? By changing the schema, different elements are activated.
Changing the words used to describe someone struggling with alcoholism or drug addiction may significantly alter the attitudes of health care professionals, even those who specialize in addiction treatment.
“We found that referring to someone with the ‘abuser’ terminology evokes more punitive attitudes than does describing that person’s situation in exactly the same words except for using ‘disorder’ terminology,” says John F. Kelly, PhD, associate director of the MGH Center for Addiction Medicine, who led the study. “Reducing the use of such stigmatizing terms could help diminish the shame, guilt and embarrassment that act as barriers, keeping people from seeking help.”
So, by using a different term than substance abuser, people with a “substance disorder” will likely think/feel/act differently themselves. As will the helping professionals think/feel/act differently about their patients.
Words are important. Word choice is important. I guess this second bit of research helps me to understand the desire people have for finding an alternative term to atheist. As easy as it is for me to focus on the purely intellectual aspects of the schema for that word, for other people the most active elements are social/emotional components that could be described as, “God abuser” and “threat to society.” So perhaps it really would be better to switch to another term altogether. One with more positive elements, maybe starting with, but not limited to “caring, reality-embracer.” Or something.
Hmm.
