Mind Performance Hacks

Hack #62. Talk to Yourself

Language isn't just for talking to other people; it may play a vital role in helping your brain combine information from different modules.

Language might be an astoundingly efficient way of getting information into your head from the outside, but that's not its only job. It also helps you think. Far from being a sign of madness, talking to yourself is something at the essence of being human.

Instead of dwelling on the evolution of language and its role in rewiring the brain into its modern form¹, let's look at one way the brain can use language to do cognitive work. Specifically we're talking about the ability of language to combine information in ordered structures—in a word: syntax.

Peter Carruthers, at the University of Maryland,² has proposed that language syntax is used to combine, simultaneously, information from different cognitive modules. By "modules," he means specialized processes into which we have no insight,³ such as color perception or instant numbers. You don't know how you know that something is red or that there are two coffee cups, you just know. Without language syntax, the claim is, we can't combine this information.

The theory seems pretty bold—or maybe even wrong—but we'll go through the evidence Carruthers uses and the details of exactly what he means, and you can make up your own mind. If he's right, the implications are profound, and it clarifies exactly how deeply language is entwined with thought. At the very least, we ...