The notions of ‘function’, ‘feature’, and ‘functional feature’ are associated with relatively new developments and insights in several areas of cognition. This book brings together different definitions, insights, and research related to defining these notions from such diverse areas as language, perception, categorization, and development. Each of the contributors in this book explicitly defines the notion of ‘function’, ‘feature’, or ‘functional feature’ within their own theoretical framework, presents research in which such a notion plays a pivotal role, and discusses the contribution of fu ... More

The notions of ‘function’, ‘feature’, and ‘functional feature’ are associated with relatively new developments and insights in several areas of cognition. This book brings together different definitions, insights, and research related to defining these notions from such diverse areas as language, perception, categorization, and development. Each of the contributors in this book explicitly defines the notion of ‘function’, ‘feature’, or ‘functional feature’ within their own theoretical framework, presents research in which such a notion plays a pivotal role, and discusses the contribution of functional features in relation to their insights in a particular area of cognition. As such, this book not only presents new developments devoted to defining ‘function’, ‘feature’, and ‘functional feature’ in several sub-disciplines of cognitive science, but also offers a focused account of how these notions operate within the cognitive interface linking language and spatial representation.