Language and Motor Planning

A more recent line of research investigates the relationship between language and motor planning. As Karl Lashley suggested in 1951, humankind’s capacity for complex sequences of action requires a plan. This is true for the action sequences required to make a pot of coffee and for the language production involved in forming a sentence. Notwithstanding, several traditional views of language posit that it is unique from other cognitive domains. Thus, one of the goals of our research is to explore possible commonalities across language and action, focused specifically on sequencing constraints. This line of research involves human adults, children, and nonhuman primates. We believe that our research will help elucidate which aspects of language may be unique, both with respect to other human activities, as well as nonhuman primate sequential behaviors.