Mark Turner is Institute Professor and Professor of Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University
Research
CSN: the Cognitive
Science Network
Turner's research focuses on the mental operations that make it possible for cognitively modern human beings to be so astoundingly creative as a species and to have such remarkable higher-order cognition. His research particularly emphasizes cognitively modern abilities for mapping and conceptual integration.
Turner co-directs The International Distributed Little Red Hen Lab, dedicated to theory of multimodal communication. Red Hen Lab develops AI, computational, statistical, and technical tools to assist those who research multimodal communication. These tools are typically open-source and are hosted on public repositories. Red Hen Lab has received support from Google Open Source for ten years in a row, 2015-2024, to develop such tools.
Turner has proposed theories concerning the nature and emergence of higher-order cognitive operations that distinguish human beings from other species and that appear in the record of our descent during the Upper Paleolithic. These higher-order cognitive operations make it possible for human beings to have remarkable behaviors: Language, gesture, art, music, mathematical insight, scientific discovery, religion, advanced social cognition, refined tool use, dance, fashions of dress, sign systems, and social systems of politics, economics, and law.
As Founding Director of the CSN: the Cognitive Science Network, Turner oversees electronic publications in areas throughout Cognitive Science.