Why do we know things?

I have posted a few comments here about mirror neurons, those neurons that help us imitate, sympathize with and anticipate what people are doing or going to do. I believe these mirror neurons have a lot do with language learning. Something happened to me this morning that made me think of mirror neurons. I was riding in a car and the person driving the car ahead of us stopped and signaled that she was going to turn right. She was about 10 metres from the intersection and just beside a parked car. There was a parking space behind the parked car. I instantly, almost instinctively, knew that she was signaling because she wanted to back up and park, not because she wanted to turn right. How did I know that? How was I able to anticipate what she wanted to do? I believe that my mirror neurons told me. They were acting out what was going to happen based on my experience of watching people drive, and driving myself. Certainly I was not born with some innate set of driving instructions.

We learn by observing others. Our mirror neurons help us imitate because they fire the same way whether we are doing an action, or simply hearing and listening to someone doing an action. If we watch someone play tennis we start to learn how to play tennis. We just imitate them. The more we see them play, the better feel we have of how to play. Without the opportunity to see others, there is no way a book of instruction on tennis would be meaningful to us. It is the same way with language. We need to see and hear the language, as much as possible. That is how we will develop the ability to imitate the language. I will touch on vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation separately.