Humans, like other species, do and feel and think many different things. Much of what is important and meaningful in our lives happens in the form of sounds, sights, smells, movements and feelings of many sorts, processed simultaneously on many levels. Humans, like other species, also communicate these experiences in a wide variety of forms, through multiple sensory modalities and movements, intentionally and unintentionally.

Humans differ from other species, however, in also possessing the verbal mode of expression, with its own forms and features, and its great power. Using words to represent entities in the world, and putting series of words together, we can refer not only to what is present but can potentially represent any entity, past, present or future, existing or imagined; can negate, compare, include, or exclude elements to form categories; can organize and reflect on the meanings of events and can direct and regulate ourselves to some degree. We can reach not only others in the room with us, but uncountable others across the networks of communication around the world, and we can have our ideas and thoughts preserved over time.

Where difficulties arise, however, is in expressing the streams of sensory and bodily experience, happening within oneself, in the moment, in words. These difficulties can be seen in a wide range of contexts—in teaching particular movements in sports or dance, in characterizing the nuances of a painting or a sculpture or a piece of music, and in many everyday domains, such as communicating culinary skills. Grandma is not holding back when she cannot find the words to explain how to make the dumplings light or the strudel dough flaky; if one wants to learn such skills one needs to observe what she does and to feel and smell and taste. The artist or composer has difficulty in explaining what h/her work is about; the meaning is in the work itself. A similar difficulty applies for creative scientific work. In a letter describing his way of working, Einstein writes:

The words of the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be “voluntarily” reproduced and combined.…. The above-mentioned elements are, in my case, of visual and some of muscular type (Hadamard 1996).

The gap between experience and language is particularly deep for emotional experience. People may be speechless with awe, or fear. J.M. Barrie’s Sentimental Tommy had to be careful not to see too much beauty; he was highly susceptible to being struck dumb with admiration.Footnote 1 After first violating her marriage vows and beginning her relationship with Vronsky, Anna Karenina “found no words in which she could express the complexity of her feelings; indeed she could not even find thoughts in which she could clearly think out all that was in her soul.” (Tolstoy 1878/2000, p. 150). Billy Bigelow, in Carousel, struggling with his feelings for Julie, describes what would happen if he loved her:

If I loved you, time and again I would try to say all I'd want you to know.

If I loved you, words wouldn't come in an easy way, round in circles I'd go!

He doesn’t love her, doesn’t want to marry her, doesn’t need her, doesn’t need anyone—but.

why are blossoms floating down around them on this windless night?

The difficulties involved in connecting experience and language, which are addressed prominently in literature, have not been widely recognized by psychologists or linguists. During the reign of behaviorism, for about half a century beginning with Watson (1913), language as spoken or written was viewed as the face or even the content of thought. The ‘cognitive revolution’ of the 1960s went beyond the surface forms of behaviorism, developing models of mind based on the structure of computers, and moving from focus on the surface forms of language to formats based on abstract propositional codes. While these abstract codes are not themselves verbal, they operate within the classical symbolic architecture and can be readily mapped onto natural language forms.

Similar assumptions regarding the relation of thought and language can be seen in theoretical linguistics. The content of an expression is characterized as ‘deep structure’—the linguistic version of the format of thought—to be mapped via linguistic algorithms onto ‘surface structure’, the format of natural language (Bock et al. 1992) While there is considerable controversy concerning the nature of the underlying meaning structures, as involving semantic or syntactic relationships or other forms, and competing accounts of the mapping process, there is general agreement that the meanings are symbolic in form, and mappable onto words or sequences of words.

The processes involved in connecting experience to words are not assessed by standard intelligence measures such as the Similarities and Vocabulary subtests of the WAIS, which focus on semantic organization (Bucci and Friedman 1978), and are not associated with mature levels of mental functioning by major developmental psychologists. Thus in Piaget’s theory (1950), the sensory motor phase gives way to concrete and then to formal operations. For Bruner (1966) sensory and iconic processing give way to symbolic modes. Only Werner, of the major developmental theorists, has incorporated the possibility of dual lines of cognitive processing, reflecting different functions, for some individuals, throughout life, but without explicitly addressing the issue of the integration of the separate processing tracks (Werner and Kaplan 1984).

Even psychoanalytic theory, despite the central role of mind–body interaction, and the recognition of an alternate mode of psychological organization termed the ‘primary process’, has retained the assumption of language as the mature rational form of thought. In contrast to the unconscious fantasies that are viewed as dominant in the primary process, the secondary process is seen as logical, reality based, verbal and dominant in conscious and preconscious thought. Throughout the shifts in psychoanalytic theory, from the topographic to the structural model and beyond, the association of language to consciousness and rational thought has remained.

Multiple Code Theory and the Referential Process

The basic premise underlying the work to be presented in this issue is that human mentation involves multiple formats of thought, which are connected substantially but partially. Paivio (1971) introduced the dual code theory, including visual imagery as well as language as providing the format and organization of thought. The introduction of imagery as a systematic aspect of thought was a move away from the abstract forms that dominated the verbal and propositional models, and raised new questions as to the organization of representational systems and the production of language. The dual code theory was initially applied to psychoanalysis by Bucci (1985). The multiple code theory (Bucci 1997) went beyond dual coding to incorporate the streams of sensory and bodily experience as elements of thought. Bucci (1997) also introduced the concepts of the referential process, connecting the various nonverbal forms to the system of language, and the emotion schemas, which underly the organization of life experience in memory. This paper will summarize current perspectives on the multiple code theory and associated concepts, to provide a framework for the research to be presented in this issue.

Modes of Cognitive and Emotional Functioning in Multiple Code Theory

Multiple code theory provides an account of human emotional information processing as including symbolic and subsymbolic forms, which may operate within or outside of awareness. Each mode operates in its own format throughout normal, rational, adult life; the different modes are connected to a limited degree.Footnote 2

Symbolic Processes

Technically, symbols are defined as discrete representations with properties of reference and generativity; that is, they refer to other entities and may be combined to generate an infinite array of new forms. Symbols may be words or images.

Words as Symbols

In the verbal system, generativity occurs from the level of the morpheme (the smallest meaning unit of a language) to the construction of words and sentences, up to the discourse of spoken language, or the paragraphs that fill our libraries. Lexical items (words or parts of words) are generally characterized as arbitrary and abstract. The sound of a spoken word is generally not associated with its meaning; although exceptions to this principle can be found in instances of onomatopoeia (clatter, belch, trickle). The sounds and rhythms of speech also have their own communicative value, as will be discussed. Similarly, the look of a written word is generally viewed as not connected to its meaning, although exceptions to this principle can also be found, as in the poetry of Ogden Nash. Numbers are included as symbols with features of words.

Images as Symbols

Processes of reference and generativity operate within the system of visual imagery as for verbal forms. It is possible to build a picture of a person based on individual discrete components: the nose, mouth, the shape of the ears; the hairline and other distinguishing features. People generally associate images with the visual modality, but images may also occur in all sensory forms—as sounds, textures, even smells and tastes. In contrast to words, images are generally not arbitrary and abstract but are intended to resemble the entities they represent. Exceptions may occur here as well, as in abstract art, where no specific entity may be represented. From another perspective, icons, traffic signs, emojis and other signs and indicators also function as images with formal properties—closer to the verbal system.

The Subsymbolic System

The subsymbolic mode is less widely recognized as a process of thought but is constantly operating in our daily lives.Footnote 3 People, from the beginning of life, experience gradations in feelings in all sensory modalities and in their bodily experience and movements. These processes are based largely on analogic relationships rather than as the representation of discrete entities or features as in symbolic forms. Subsymbolic processing is central in music, dance, sports and the arts, in many activities of daily life such as cooking and tasting wine, and in creative scientific work as Einstein has described. Subsymbolic processing is central as well in the mother’s knowing in her body what her baby is feeling (and the baby knowing the mother’s feelings as well). The everyday task of changing lanes on a highway requires judging the speeds and distances of vehicles approaching and passing, in relation to one’s own speed, and directing one’s steering, accelerating and braking using those judgments. The dimensions of speed and distance are inherently continuous; the continuous computations carried out by the driver are not measurements in the usual mathematical sense, but are systematic computations of a unique kind. The same sorts of continuous computations apply in hitting a tennis ball, in the lead and follow required to execute a tango step, and in sensing the consistency of the dumpling dough.

These processes cannot be characterized as simple reflex responses or as occurring outside of awareness. While skills are needed that must be acquired and that improve with practice, each situation that is encountered is unique and requires close attention and complex processing. The amount of flour needed in the dumpling dough will vary with the humidity and the temperature in the kitchen in ways that cannot be measured, just as the decision of the driver to accelerate at a particular time in order to change lanes will depend on the surrounding traffic patterns, as these occur uniquely at a given point in time. To see intense focus in action one can observe, in close-ups, the wide-opened eyes of Djokovic, considered by many the greatest returner in tennis history, as he waits for a serve—‘computing’ the direction and speed of a served ball as his opponent hits it or probably before, and incorporating his estimate of where his opponent is likely to move.

People know this processing as intuition, the wisdom of the body and in other related ways, but are not accustomed to referring to such processing as thought. Much of what has been described as unconscious thought and unconscious communication is based on such processing, requiring highly focused attention, but often experienced as in a sense "outside of oneself". The state of mind associated with subsymbolic processing has been characterized as a “flow” experience (Csíkszentmihályi 1990), and is highly prized by athletes, writers, performers and others working in creative fields. Within cognitive science, some attempts have been made to model aspects of such processes systematically by scientists within the connectionist or parallel distributed processing approach (Rumelhart et al. 1986), but they have not come close to modeling the computations involved in the Djokovic return of serve.

The Organization of Experience: Memory Schemas and Emotion Schemas

The experiences of life include both symbolic and subsymbolic forms. Memories of these experiences constitute each person’s knowledge of the world—knowledge of one’s own personal life, and of the wider world. These memories begin to develop from the beginning of life, well before language is acquired and continue to develop throughout life. As characterized by Bartlett (1932), in his concept of memory schemas, memories are not fixed stores of knowledge but are active and constructive processes. The memory schemas that have been developed determine how one experiences new events, and new events are entered as instantiations of a schema, enlarging and modifying one’s knowledge. Retrieval of a memory involves activation of a network of potential connections, including multiple instantiations of events, as well as categorical labels.

Memory schemas may include all types of knowledge, including all the skills and arts and sciences that people have developed, from playing tennis to playing the violin to theoretical physics and the history of Europe. Emotion schemas are particular types of memory schemas with two major features: they are dominated by the sensory and bodily experiences that make up what we have termed the affective core of the schema, and they represent experiences of one’s life rather than general knowledge—primarily experiences involving other people—although animals and inanimate objects may be affectively charged as well (Bucci et al. 2016). An emotion schema is developed through the occurrence, from the beginning of life, and throughout life, of a series of episodes that involve the same or related sensory and visceral arousal and actions in different contexts. Thus a person may experience similar patterns of bodily and sensory experience—heart beating faster, breathing rapid and shallow, fingers tingling, shivering, a slight gagging in the throat—in many contexts: in the very beginning of life feeling mother’s skin as particularly cold and dry under certain circumstances, or being left with a particular caretaker, or hearing certain vocal tones; later on the first day of nursery school or anticipating an arithmetic test; in current life in contexts as manifestly different as delivering a paper at a conference, going to a family holiday party, sitting in a doctor’s waiting room, being interviewed for a job, or meeting an attractive person at a party. Each instantiation with a critical mass of shared bodily and sensory components adds to the schema and contributes to its reconstruction. The relation of these schemas to emotional organization and emotional labels as generally understood (anger, fear, joy, love) will be discussed.

The Referential Process

Connecting Experience and Language; the Referential Process

The question of how language emerged has been a focus of exploration in both phylogeny and ontogeny—in studies of the origin of language in evolution of the species, and in child development—and considerable controversy and considerable mystery remain in these areas.In this paper (and in the studies to be reported in this issue) we focus on a different aspect of the emergence of language—the process as it occurs when an individual connects or attempts to connect the experiences of life, including subsymbolic components operating in multiple sensory channels, to the discrete single channel verbal code.

While the difficulties of finding words for experience was generally not addressed within scientific psychology, there have been many studies of an experience initially described by James (1890), then named by Brown and McNeill (1966) as the tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon. This phenomenon involves failure to retrieve a word that the person experiences as known but out of reach. According to James (1893):

The state of our consciousness is peculiar. There is a gap therein; but no mere gap. It is a gap that is intensely active. A sort of wraith of the name is in it, beckoning us in a given direction, making us at moments tingle with the sense of our closeness and then letting us sink back without the longed-for term (p.251).

The nature of this state, all too well known to all of us, needs to be distinguished from the more complex process of finding words for the kind of experience that we have focused on in our work, and that will be examined in the papers in this issue. In the TOT, as James describes it, a ‘wraith of the name’ is present, often tormenting us; we struggle with the urge to consult google; after some hours (or days), the word or name appears, we say ‘blanc-mange’, ‘osteopath’, ‘Kurosawa’; the sense of accomplishment and relief is great. In the process of generating language that we are studying, however, no ‘wraith of the name’ is tingling there for us.

In his article “Draft No. 4”,Footnote 4 the New Yorker writer John McPhee refers to the “masochistic self-inflicted paralysis of a writer’s normal routine”:

You are writing, say, about a grizzly bear. No words are forthcoming. For six, seven, ten hours no words have been forthcoming. You are blocked, frustrated, in despair. You are nowhere, and that’s where you’ve been getting. What do you do?.

As McPhee describes it, the so-called writer’s block is inherent in being a writer: “How could anyone know that something is good before it exists?” From the perspective of multiple code theory, the problem is not that the experience does not yet exist. McPhee’s thoughts about the grizzly bear or Anna’s feelings about Vronsky may be present and active, but in a form of multiple continuous gradations of experience that do not project directly onto the discrete single channel strings of language.

Alternate Pathways of Connecting Experience and Language

There are several possible routes through which the connection of experience and language can occur, applicable to different experiences and to varying degrees. Some possible ways involve identifying discrete elements of a perception, dividing a continuous process into units, or defining categories to which an experience belongs.

Identifying Discrete Elements

A witness can describe a suspect based on discrete features of the suspect’s face and body: the shape and position of the nose, mouth, and ears; the hair color and hairline; as well as height and body size and other distinguishing features; a police artist can then construct a picture based on such descriptions.

Analyzing Chemical Composition

The tastes and smells of wine can be described based on analysis of its chemical composition as in the following example:

“Several co-eluting peaks of ethyl 4-oxo-pentanoate, 3,7-dimethyl-1,5,7-octatrien-3-ol, (Z)-2-octen-1-ol, 5-hydroxy-2-methyl-1,3- dioxane were likely—contributors to the Merlot wine aroma; while (Z)-3-hexen-1-ol, _-phenylethylacetate, hexanoic acid and co-eluting peaks of 3-ethoxy-1-propanol and hexyl formate may contribute to SV [Sauvignon Blanc + Semillon] wine aroma character” Chin et al. 2011, p. 7487).

Applying a Metric System

The processes of entering a highway or changing lanes are highly complex. While the dimensions of speed and distance are inherently continuous, it might be possible for a mathematician to simulate the computation by applying a metric system with explicit units and specified coordinates or base points—but not while driving!

Division into Categories: The Color Spectrum and the Emotion System

Variation in wave length underlying the color spectrum is inherently continuous but colors are also chunked into basic categories such as white, black, red, blue, green, yellow. Colors may be further described in terms of dimensions such as lightness and saturation. Similarly, while the bodily and sensory experiences that make up the affective core of an emotion schema are continuous and complex, emotion categories have been identified such as ‘anger, guilt, fear, disgust, joy, compassion’; the basic categories may differ in intensity; they may be blended, may be combined, and may vary in direction towards one self or others.

All of these processes of analysis and categorization are useful for some purposes of characterizing the nonverbal domain itself; all are unsatisfactory in capturing or communicating essential aspects of the human experience of a domain. A skilled artist can capture nuances of the look of a person with a few lines that are missed by a drawing that relies on the combination of individual features. The taste or smell of wine is not captured by the chemical analyses but by descriptions of experience in a wide range of modalities other than taste. Wines may be ‘youthful and tightly wound, or ‘on the gruff side, thanks to the dusty tannins’, or ‘vibrant and energetic, bursting full of candied red fruit, vivacious with a fleshy spicy finish’.Footnote 5 The application of metrics with explicit units and specified coordinates could not happen in the real time of driving; the driving instructor needs to find different terms in which to teach the necessary skills.

Colors are often described by associations outside of the spectrum or standard dimensions, as one can see in paint labels; white paints may be timid white, billowy clouds, snow on the mountain, white dove; blue paints may be arctic, serene sky, acapulco blue.

Similarly, the basic category labels that are applied to emotion do not account for the wide range of variation in people’s experience, as we have discussed in detail elsewhere (Bucci et al., 2016). As Scherer and other emotion theorists have argued:

Obviously, the small number of basic or modal emotions (something between 6 and 14 depending on the theorists) is hardly representative for the range of human (or possibly even animal) emotionality. I have argued … that there are as many different emotions as there are distinguishably different profiles of appraisal with corresponding response patterning (Scherer 2005, p. 707).

Exploration and Communication of Emotional Experience in the Referential Process

The episodes that constitute instantiations of an emotion schema, the ‘profiles of appraisal’ to which Scherer refers, are built of activation of the affective core of the schema in different contexts. The speaker or writer cannot describe the components of the affective core that are the organizers of the schema, and that determine ‘how he feels’, is often not explicitly aware of them. This is the situation in which Sentimental Tommy and Anna and Billy Bigelow found themselves—without words to express the intensity and complexity of their feelings.

Tolstoy of course is not without words to express and communicate Anna’s experience. The words of his novels have carried her experience, and the experiences of a whole world of other people, to millions of readers, in different languages, cultures and times, through descriptions of specific details of events and objects associated with the feeling, as I have discussed in detail elsewhere (Bucci et al. 2016). He has characterized the process of verbal communication of emotional experience in terms similar to those proposed here:

In everything or almost everything I have written, I have been moved by the need to bring together ideas that are closely knit, in order to express myself, but each idea, expressed separately in words, loses its meaning…This network itself is not made up of ideas (or so I think), but of something else, and it is absolutely impossible to express the substance of this network directly in words; it can be done indirectly, by using words to describe characters, acts, situations (Letter from Tolstoy to Strakhov, cited by the translator Pevear, in Tolstoy 1878/2000, p. xvi).

The continuous flow of subsymbolic experience as this occurs in multiple bodily channels is essentially the network of ‘something else’ to which Tolstoy refers. The referential process involves expressing the parallel flow of multiple experiences in the discrete single channel of the verbal mode. The process begins when something happens—an event in the world or in one’s mind or body—that activates feelings whose meaning one may not know. The feelings may be experienced as physical or as vague and general states—feeling strange, feeling apprehensive, upset about something and don’t know what. People may not recognize the source of the feeling, or even recognize that anything particular happened at all, or they may feel they know what it is about, but cannot talk adequately about it. They may nevertheless try to account for the feeling in some way, to communicate to others, or to have the feeling of understanding and control—perhaps useful, perhaps spurious—that comes with language.

In work over several years, we have identified three major functions in the process of connecting experience to words, termed Arousal, Symbolizing and Reflection/Reorganizing, and have developed measures for each of these functions. The process may be seen in literature, in everyday conversation and in creative scientific work, and may be seen most directly in forms of psychotherapy where exploration of past or present experience is encouraged. These processes may not play out in a linear manner; the sequence of functions may play out only partially, and in many cases they are simultaneously active to greater or lesser degree.

Processes of Arousal

The first phase of the process is activation of an emotion schema,Footnote 6 which is not yet in symbolic form, and which may never have been verbalized. The affective core of somatic and sensory experience will be dominant in the activation of the experience schema in this phase. In East of Eden, Steinbeck describes the reflections of Samuel Hamilton on visiting his neighbor Adam Trask and meeting Trask’s new wife, Cathy, who is expecting a baby soon. The conversation among the three of them was difficult throughout the meal.

"Samuel's mind repeated, "Something—something—can't find what it is. Something wrong, " and the silence hung on the table.” (Steinbeck 1952, p. 171).

In describing Samuel’s search for emotional meaning, Steinbeck initially uses a metaphor that is related to the affective core of the schema, rather than to an instantiation of it:

“An ache was on the top of his stomach, an apprehension that was like a sick thought. It was a Weltschmerz— which we used to call “Welshrats”— the world sadness that rises into the soul like a gas and spreads despair so that you probe for the offending event and can find none.” (Steinbeck 1952, p. 175).

That is an iconic description of the activation of the affective core, without connection to the source.

The Symbolizing Function

The experience of the Weltschmerz/“Welshrats” served as a transition to the symbolizing function. Samuel finishes his supper quickly; he is tense; he leaves for home on his horse. As he rides along, he searches in his mind for the reasons for his painful feeling. He asks himself ‘When had the Welshrats started crawling in his chest?’ He is struggling to find the source, some meaning for the arousal.

He comes to the image, in the event just past:

He found it then— and it was Cathy, pretty, tiny, delicate Cathy. But what about her?...

“He built her face in front of him and studied her wide-set eyes, delicate nostrils, mouth smaller than he liked but sweet, small firm chin, and back to her eyes. Were they cold? Was it her eyes? He was circling to the point. The eyes of Cathy had no message, no communication of any kind. There was nothing recognizable behind them. They were not human eyes. They reminded him of something— what was it?— some memory, some picture. He strove to find it and then it came of itself. It rose out of the years complete with all its colors and its cries, its crowded feelings.” (Steinbeck 1952, p. 175).

Steinbeck describes the event in Samuel’s memory in great detail, summarized briefly here. He was a small boy, at a fair in Londonderry with his father. They were swept up unexpectedly, unintentionally in a crowd gathered to witness an execution. His father struggles to force their way out against the flood of people, but they can't get away. Samuel as a young boy does not understand the situation, but he sees a man with golden hair, who is dressed in dark trousers and a light blue shirt open at the throat, and who seemed to have no arms. The man looked out over the crowd and then looked down, right at Samuel. The man’s eyes had no depth—they were not like other eyes, not like the eyes of a man. Then Samuel's father covers the boy's eyes and ears, and he doesn't see any more.

Later in the day, he tries to talk about the man’s eyes, his father gives him sweets and toys, and attempts to turn Samuel away from his thoughts.

Reflection/Reorganizing

Samuel recognizes the source of his dread, the feeling of Welshrats crawling in his chest:

“It was the eyes, of course, Samuel thought. Only twice in my life have I seen eyes like that— not like human eyes.” (Steinbeck 1952, p. 177).

The full playing out of the referential process involves elaboration and reorganization of the meaning of the images and events reported in the narrative phase, to find new meaning. This doesn’t happen for Samuel in this instance. As his father covered his eyes and ears during the execution, and attempted to sweeten the memory afterwards, Samuel also tries to avoid the associations of his memory and the feelings associated with them:

“And he thought, it’s the night and the moon. Now what connection under heaven can there be between the golden man hanged so long ago and the sweet little bearing mother?... My imagination will get me a passport to hell one day. Let me dig this nonsense out … Some accident of eye shape and eye color, it is. But no, that’s not it. It’s a look and has no reference to shape or color. Well, why is a look evil then? Maybe such a look may have been sometime on a holy face. Now, stop this romancing and never let it trouble again— ever. He shivered."Footnote 7 (Steinbeck 1952, p. 177).

The phase of reflection and reorganizing, occurring in an effective way, is not easy to find in literature. Samuel's verbal reflections, his attempted disclaimers and explanations did not have the power to regulate his affect; he continued to shiver. Misfortunes directly and indirectly related to Cathy occurred in the Trask family and in Samuel's life and in the valley from then on. Eventually Samuel recognized Cathy as evil, but his attempt to avoid his feelings impaired his power to affect real events.

The processes involved in this phase occur more directly in psychotherapy, as will be discussed in several papers in this issue. In literature, to find this phase, we need to look for authors who enable their characters to change. When Elizabeth Bennett receives a letter from Mr. Darcy explaining his behavior to Wickham and to her sister Jane, she at first reads “with a strong prejudice against everything he might say”. Then, in a perturbed state of mind, she is driven to reread the letter and to acknowledge its possible truth:

How differently did everything now appear in which he was concerned! …

She grew absolutely ashamed of herself. Of neither Darcy nor Wickham could she think without feeling she had been blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd. "How despicably I have acted!" she cried; "I, who have prided myself on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my abilities! … How humiliating is this discovery! Yet, how just a humiliation! Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind! But vanity, not love, has been my folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment I never knew myself." (Austen, 1813/1952, p.193–194).

Summary: Basic Concepts of Multiple Code Theory

  1. 1.

    The processes of human (and animal) thought and communication are determined by the bodily structures in which they take place. Computer models based on propositional forms are insufficient to account for the complex interactive systems that underly emotional and reasoning and linguistic functions.

  2. 2.

    In considering the forms of thought, we are concerned with psychological aspects as distinguished from their neuronal implementation. In particular, while the neural structure involves individual discrete neurons, the psychological functions enable representation of continuous processes as well as discrete forms. We expect that the psychological functions that are identified will be mappable onto the underlying neural structure, not inconsistent with that structure; however similar neural structures may function in different ways, and be realizable psychologically in different forms.

  3. 3.

    The functions of thought and language are not equivalent; thought and communication may both be verbal or nonverbal.

  4. 4.

    Thought and emotion are not distinct functions. Memory schemas are the basic structures underlying knowledge and are activated in thought. The memory schemas vary as to the degree to which they represent the experiences of one’s life, and incorporate the sensory and somatic activation of the affective core. To the extent that memory schemas are dominated by personal experience and subsymbolic sensory and motoric components, they are considered emotion schemas; this is not a categorical distinction but a matter of degree.

  5. 5.

    Consciousness is also a matter of degree; both nonverbal and verbal processing may occur within or outside of the focus of attention. Attention has an important role in the referential process, not well understood.