6. Experimental study of the problem "language - thinking"

A priori, that is, without special evidence, it is clear that language and thinking are connected with each other. But the nature of this connection is not at all obvious: either thinking is first formed in the human psychic apparatus, and then “connected” with the emerging language, or, conversely, the emerging language becomes the basis for the development of thinking. And, maybe, they are formed simultaneously, spontaneously influencing each other? And yet: in what form does our natural language exist in the gray matter of our brain? It is clear that it is difficult to imagine that our lexicon was stored in this very gray substance in the form in which we see it under the book cover, ordered alphabetically. But if not, how? And in what form are the grammar rules stored in our memory? It can not be that exactly as in the grammatical reference book!

Observations on children's speech show that in 3-5 years of conscious life, a normal child can learn - without any textbooks and qualified teachers, without the help of language laboratories, etc. - any language in its basic system characteristics. At the same time, as you know, an adult and goal-oriented young person at the faculty of foreign languages ​​(and earlier for many years at school) must persistently study daily under the guidance of specially trained teachers and special means in order to achieve the desired goal in 4-5 years. But even an excellent graduate from a special department does not always reveal that sense of language, that unmistakable ability to navigate in its intricacies, as does a five-year-old child who has mastered his native language.

Why? I must honestly say that not everything has been fully clarified by scientists here, the main discoveries are ahead.

We already know from the introductory chapter that a certain level of thinking, observed in the untrained language of the deaf and dumb, is clearly achieved without the help of the language. But let us turn to human activity, free from speech defects. Let's read in one of S. Dovlatov's stories:

“- Did you read my story“ Fate ”? - Of course, because I recruited it for the crossroads almanac. Then I ask another question: - What are you typing now? - Bulgakov for Ardis. - Why aren't you laughing? “Because I’m typing completely automatically.”

Is it possible to produce a completely automatic typing, without delving into its content? If - yes, then the work of a typewriter or typist seems to be a very special kind of activity: apparently this work seems to be verbal, that is, there is text processing (and twice reading from a manuscript and a reproduction of his letters on the keys), and thinking in This process does not participate. Where is the obligatory connection between the two? ..

A large multi-part experiment was conducted with typists and typesetters. Already preliminary observations have shown that experienced typesetters and typists manage during work to throw exchanges with each other (without interruption from work), listen to radio programs (not musical, but “conversational”). In special conditions it was verified that understanding of the neighbor’s speech or the text of radio programs is, indeed, not done in “gaps”, not in the short intervals between typing or typing, but in parallel with them. However, scientists have found a way to make such work difficult and even impossible: it was proposed to reprint (or type) a text that was specially deformed grammatically - both syntactically and morphologically. Here is an example of a sentence from such a text: " Many of this and later also or or here from an brass ant boot went soon because it became absolutely white ." Nobody could reprint (type) this kind of text without distracting from the texts of conversations or from the text of radio programs. No, not a nonsense thing. With good speed, an equally meaningless text was reprinted (without interrupting

extraneous conversations): “ Much of this at the moment and later ants in brass boots were found repeatedly; at the same time they became completely white . ”

It means that the semantics of the text they were processing was not a hindrance to the typesetters, but its superficial structure — a verbal structure that was broken. So, the woman from S. Dovlatov's story told quite honestly that she works with the text “completely automatically”. And let us remember how diverse (not only by genre, but also by specialty) texts have to be reprinted (typed): from the minutes of general meetings, to monographs of narrow specialists. Understanding the text here is not only impossible, but also impractical; it would, if one understood the meaning, only slow down the work.

At the end of the 1970s, a massive experiment was conducted with students at lectures in linguistics at various universities in our country. The lecturers, having previously agreed among themselves, inserted into the notes of their lectures several fragments that had to be dictated to the students for accurate recording. One piece was this: " In one of the Antilles, a population of birds was discovered last year, which were communicating with each other using Morse code, and in their free time they were able to cook tasty cookies according to recipes of cookbooks ." And what? The overwhelming majority of first-year students, who are not accustomed to meaningful recording of lectures, diligently recorded this formally correct text in their notebooks. And only after re-reading it at the request of the teacher, the audience laughed and confused.

The scourge for any university teacher are students (most often - students) talkers (chatterboxes). Moreover, in response to the comments of lecturers, these lovely creatures, as a rule, assure the teacher that when they talk with their neighbor on the desk, “everyone listens, understands and writes down”. But maybe they can really learn the lecture material, communicating with a friend? The ability to simultaneously read, listen to reports, and even dictate something to her scribe rumor attributed to the famous Roman emperor Guy Julius Caesar. Napoleon Bonaparte was rumored to have the same talent. Is it possible?

In a special experiment, a large group of subjects transmitted the same texts through headphones, and simultaneously the texts of the same were processed through the visual channel.

volume, but completely different content. What are the results? After all, after the experiment, the subjects had to retell both the text presented by ear, and the one that was presented visually. The Caesar Phenomenon was not confirmed in any way: either the subjects focused on the text they read (and then recited it well), or on the text through headphones (and recited it well). Nobody could retell parallel texts, even the topic was difficult to name. A typical test report: “At first, it seemed as if I could read and listen at the same time. But after only one text crumbled, did not remain in memory. ” Those who, by all means, watching themselves, tried to assimilate the content of both texts, did not remember a single one. It seems that the result can be understood as follows: the areas of the cortex responsible for the auditory and visual perception (they are located in different parts of the brain) worked normally and performed their tasks regularly. But after all, visual and auditory signals without delays entered the common center of semantic (semantic) information processing. And here there was an interference (interposition, mixing) of the results of brain decoding of signals of the same nature (speech). Intracerebral analogs of verbal and word-combining meanings have lost their clarity, hindered the “decoding” of textual and differently shaped materials. Most likely, the "Caesar's phenomenon" does not exist, and the myth about him disguised the ability of the famous emperor to distribute his attention to the texts in the temporary "gaps" between their execution.

There is even less likelihood that outside communication (chatter) at a lecture does not interfere with learning. Psycholinguistics responsibly asserts that two meaningful speech actions cannot be performed simultaneously.

But we need to move from the described part of the experiment to its second part. But it went differently: similar texts were transmitted through the headphones, as before, and completely different material was chosen for visual presentation - a series of drawings by X. Bidstrup (6 in each series). Each series was a kind of “patterned” story about an event. Understanding the meaning of the series could only be consistently moving from one drawing to another. The time was adjusted so that the text of the ear could be normally learned for the same period as the series of drawings. What is the result? Quite

not that when processing two verbal texts - and the filed by the ear was retold without loss, and the series of pictures was described correctly. Why? Yes, because the figurative content of the drawings is practically almost not necessary to recode in the brain apparatus, and the verbal text had to be deciphered anyway in the processing center of meanings: while it was deciphered, the drawing was already learned.

The experiment shows that: a) the national-language material is understood by us only because it must first undergo recoding into a special brain code responsible for building meaning. This code, in the course of its operation, is the information system, which we call “thinking”. This code does not depend on the specifics of the national language, it is universal and sublanguage. We have already said that Nikolai Ivanovich Zhinkin called it the CPC - the universal object code, in which all our figurative representations and communication schemes (meanings) and b) are built (picture, picture, real life situation, chess position, design drawing) which we know) - it all depends on the knowledge of the meaning, and not on the knowledge of the language. All this in its essence is either the same or close to the units and combinations of units of the CPC. Therefore, the figure is understood by representatives of almost any language, if they know the corresponding common cultural objects representing approximately the same level of civilization, and not certain ethnospecific symbols.

Since the understanding of language texts and a series of drawings are unconditionally meaningful, that is, thought processes, experience shows that one of these processes (reading) is unconditionally carried out - at least at the initial stage of perception - on the basis of the corresponding national language, and the other (perception of pictures) - does without the intervention of the language, is a non-verbal process.

As for the ability to process the surface structure of the text without penetrating into the meaning of what is read and printed (typed), this ability is real, even professional, for a certain group of people. The realization of this ability indicates that the connection between the process of thinking and the verbalization of the surface structure of the text may be clearly zero, absent.

So, under certain conditions, thought and the language construct are able to “coexist” without any connection. In other words, it can be argued that speech and thinking are independent cognitive processes that can be present in our consciousness independently of each other. Even more simply: in the real life of people we are confronted with “ thinking without speech ”, and (more paradoxically) with “ speech without thinking ”. In the same case, when thinking and speech are combined into one cognitive (cognitive) process, we are dealing with speech (discursive) thinking.

In the mid-1960s, the well-known psychologist A. N. Sokolov and his staff conducted an enormous and very important series of experiments to clarify the main issue of the psychology of speech, the interdependence of thinking and language. Psychologists decided to find out whether the national language is a "basal component" of the thinking process. For this, numerous test subjects with different native languages ​​were given various tasks, the solutions of which certainly required comprehension and ruled out automatism. One series of tasks was undoubtedly related to operations in the language: reading unfamiliar text, mentally reproducing a famous poem, etc. Another series of tasks (labyrinth tasks, assembling a holistic image from fragments, drafts and chess problems, researching drawings with similar details, etc. ) did not provide direct reliance on the language. All subjects were equipped in the language, on the lips, on the epiglottis with special sensors, the pulses from which were recorded with precision instruments. Specific patterns from recorders, similar to oscillograms, were called “electromyograms” (EMG). So, EMGs were obtained from all subjects without exception, that is, it was practically proved that at any moment of the solution of any mental task the articulation organs were in motion, showed their activity hidden from the eyes and ears (the latent activity is called "latent" ). The conclusion was made: the latent activity of the organs of articulation in the moments of solving mental tasks indicates that "the national language is the basic component of thinking." Which, as they say, was required to prove.

Now let us turn to the questions that were asked after the presentation of the results of the experiments, and to the answers that were given to them:

1. Was the EMG removed from any pets? After all, if EMG were removed from them, and the latter would show similar or identical latent movements, then it would become clear that the EMG does not fix the “latent articulation” associated with the national language, but something completely different! The answer to this question was negative: EMG was not removed from animals.

2. It is known that children (and not only they) in the moments of drawing, embroidery, overcoming any obstacles stick out the tongue, tighten their lips, etc. Painting the figure with a colored pencil and similar tasks do not require much thought, but reveal particular activity of the organs articulation. But it is also known that our organs of articulation initially and to this day also perform non-linguistic functions (when eating, when biting a thread, etc.). Is it possible to say that this kind of activity is precisely articulation (latent speech), and not a different type of activity that is not associated with speech? There was no clear answer to this question, although it was found interesting.

3. Did the experimenters find, comparing with each other EMG from different subjects, common fragments in those EMG that were multilingual? Did the experiment happen that the speakers of the same language mentally reproduced the same poem? If yes, then did EMG differ from them from those taken from other languages? This question was answered as follows: many EMGs found similar fragments and dissimilar fragments among themselves. But it was not possible to identify common or dissimilar languages ​​by them. In our opinion, unconditionally bona fide experiments did not prove what the experimenters expected.

Еще одно соображение в связи с рассматриваемой темой и результатами другого опыта.

Известна максимальная скорость латентных микродвижений органов артикуляции; эти движения, естественно, соответствуют способности произносить некоторый текст на данном национальном языке, но, в отличие от артикуляции речи вслух, латентные движения более кратковременны. Их скорость примерно втрое выше скорости артикулирования звуковой речи. Если последняя производится со скоростью 8 слогов в секунду, то максимальная

латентная артикуляция осуществляется, следовательно, с максимальной скоростью 24 слога в секунду. Легко организовать следующий опыт. Раздать, скажем, десяти испытуемым по одной репродукции с сюжетной картины, ранее испытуемым не известной. По сигналу ведущего опыт, испытуемые переворачивают репродукцию «лицом вверх» и в течение 2-х секунд рассматривают ее. После этого картинки переворачиваются тыльной стороной вверх, а испытуемые описывают увиденное на специально заготовленных листках. Согласно инструкции, им надо максимально лаконично описать увиденное на картинках, перечисляя предметы, их взаимное расположение и цвет (размер), а также самым кратким образом сформулировать смысл изображения. Затем листки собираются ведущим опыт, а написанные тексты дополнительно сокращаются: все слова по возможности заменяются на наиболее краткие синонимы, убираются избыточные слова и словосочетания; например, вместо «изображенная ваза» -«ваза». Вычеркиваются и заголовки, формулировки смысла, нужные только для того, чтобы ведущий понял, что содержание репродукции усвоено верно. В оставшемся тексте подсчитываем число слогов. Допустим, что оно равно (так было в реальных опытах) в среднем 250. Отнимаем от этого числа 100, учитывая, что образ увиденного некоторое время остается в оперативной памяти испытуемых (явление эйдетизма) уже после конца предъявленной картинки. Оставшееся число (150) делим на максимальную скорость латентной артикуляции, т. е. на 24 слога в секунду. Получаем около 6 (секунд). Но ведь картинка осмыслялась за время втрое меньше. Отсюда делаем вывод, что при осмыслении картинки не нужна была латентная артикуляция, т. е. не было языковых операций.

Что касается мнения, что внутренняя речь (понимаемая как внутреннее проговаривание) является сравнительно с внешней «свернутой» до такой степени, что якобы слову средней величины соответствует только один краткий слог, а тексту - только группа таких слогов, то - будь это так — нет никакого права считать такое «свернутое нечто» какой-то единицей национального языка. Судите сами: разве ряд артикулем типа «жевамвседобнам-нолет» отражает структурно-языковые особенности предложения русского языка «Желаем вам всего доброго на много лет»? Да нет же! Скорее всего, этот ряд похож на высказывание на одном из инкорпорирующих языков вроде чукотского.

Полагаем, что на этом можно завершить рассмотрение вопроса о характере связи процессов мышления с процессами реализации языка в речи. И сделать вывод: нормально человек мыслит, когда говорит о чем-то. Это и есть речевое (дискурсивное) мышление, где, говоря словами Л. С. Выготского «мысль рождается в слове». Как мы уже говорили, подобный тип спонтанного порождения текста (дискурса) осуществляется в условиях практической одновременности формирования мысли и речи. Но это не значит, что человек, мысля, обязательно при этом еще и «скрытно говорит». Поэтому Н. И. Жинкин утверждал, что «человек мыслит не на каком-либо национальном языке, а средствами универсально-предметного кода мозга, кода с надъязыковыми свойствами».