Thought without Language

A collection of 19 essays aiming to answer questions about the dependancy of thought on language, based on a Fyssen Foundation symposium held in Versailles in April 1987 and bringing together research into non-verbal thinking in adults, in pre-linguistic infants and in animals. Topics covered include the role of the "non-verbal" right cerebral hemisphere in humans; the investigation of non-verbal aspects of various categories of cognition (such as abstract reasoning, spatial awareness and pattern recognition); evidence for cognition without conscious awareness, and neurological and developmental evidence. The concluding chapter is a personal account by a dyslexic mathematician of the nature of his handicap and the non-verbal reasoning that he has developed to cope with this.