Mental processing of information: a neurolinguistic approach

Abstract

When humans interact for communication, the information exchanged involves more than just speech sounds; rather, such activities as gestures and paralanguage, not to mention the environmental settings and contextual cues, are part and parcel of that information. How information of this kind is processed mentally by the Central Nervous System (CNS) is, thus, of vital concern in this paper. The purpose, therefore, is threefold: (1) to delineate the concept of ‘information’ from the viewpoint of neurophysiology; (2) to describe how such information is processed by the CNS; and then (3) to propose a theory called “Force Enhancement” which can explain much of the tasks of the mental processing of information. The underlying theoretical construct is that human speech activities vary in functional complexity, ranging from functionally simple to functionally complex utterances. When functionally complex utterances are employed, the CNS is expected to enhance its force in order to accomplish the task of processing such utterances for their real meanings. However, when functionally simple utterances are exchanged, no such enhancement is to be expected. The article also compares several scholars' functional views and explains the difference between what is known as ‘information’ in linguistics and other sister disciplines and what neurophysiologists call ‘information’ in their own field. This paper is based on the latter when the theory of force enhancement is proposed. In short, mental processing of information is not a static ability, when information is taken to mean ‘impulses’ (in its neurophysiological sense); rather, it is a fluctuating one, its variability depending upon two factors: (1) developmentally on the condition of the CNS at the time of processing and (2) contextually on the functional complexity of the information being processed.