A Cognitive Account of the Puzzle of Ideography

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This commentary proposes that modality effects, chunking, multi-sensory integration, and attention explain how spoken languages standardize and dominate graphic codes for communication.

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Abstract

In this commentary piece to 'The Puzzle of Ideography' by Morin, we put forth a new cognitive account of the puzzle of ideography, that complements the standardization account of Morin. Efficient standardization of spoken language is phenomenologically attributed to a modality effect coupled with chunking of cognitive representations, further aided by multi-sensory integration and the serialized nature of attention. These cognitive mechanisms are crucial for explaining why languages dominate graphic codes for general-purpose human communication.

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europepmc
last seen: 2026-05-19T01:45:01.086888+00:00
unpaywall
last seen: 2026-05-26T02:00:01.498150+00:00
License: CC-BY-4.0