In Harnessed, cognitive psychologist Mark Changizi suggests that language – and music – evolved to make use of our brain’s pre-existing processing skills
HUMANS are very good at language. Computers are just beginning to cope with the complexities of speech, but almost every child masters language easily. This remarkable talent has led some anthropologists and psychologists to conclude that we have an innate “language instinct” – that evolution shaped our brains into language-learning devices.
In Harnessed, psychologist Mark Changizi turns this argument on its head: instead of our brains adapting to language, he claims, language has evolved to take advantage of sound-processing…
