Embodied Cognition PDF

Does intelligence require a body? To understand the world, we must experience the world Embodied Cognition Piano Fred struggled to lift the piano What do mental representations of concepts look like? • Traditional View • Abstract, Stable, Similar • Sandwich Model: cognition is sandwiched betw...

Does intelligence require a body? To understand the world, we must experience the world Embodied Cognition Piano Fred struggled to lift the piano What do mental representations of concepts look like? • Traditional View • Abstract, Stable, Similar • Sandwich Model: cognition is sandwiched between perception and action • Barsalou (2012) • Flexible • Embodied Cognition: cognition is largely grounded on the perceptual and motor systems A Philosophical Perspective Embodied cognition provides a potential solution to the symbol-grounding problem Embodied Cognition: Some Evidence • Action-Sentence Compatibility Effect • Faster response when action performed by the participant was congruent with the action described in the sentence (Glenberg & Kaschak, 2002) Congruent Trials Incongruent Trials Multi-lab, preregistered replication attempt resulted in a failure to replicate, including in crucial liftoff time measure (Morey et al., 2022) Sensorimotor System Involvement • Reading “lick” “pick” and “kick” activate areas in the brain associated with the corresponding actions (Hauk et al., 2004), as soon as 200-300 ms post stimulus presentation (2008) • TMS of somatosensory cortex related to arms or legs facilitates recognition of action verbs involving movement of the respective extremities (Pulvermuller et al, 2005) • Behavioral congruency effects do not always result in corresponding neuro data (Miller et al., 2018) What about abstract concepts?? • Abstract conceptual information does not seem to rely on the sensorimotor areas to the same extent as concrete concepts • No early sensorimotor activation (Dalla Volta et al., 2014) • No interference due to TMS impulses (Innocenti et al, 2014) Conceptual Metaphors: abstract concepts are understood by way of metaphor grounded in sensorimotor experiences (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999) Conceptual Metaphors ANGER IS HEATED FLUID IN A CONTAINER I’m reaching my boiling point She blew up about it He needs to simmer down • “Grasp an idea” = “Grasp a cup” – both elicit same motor cortical area (Boulenger et al., 2009), though may be isolated to less familiar metaphors (Aziz-Zadeh et al, 2006) • People tend to allocate concepts to spatial areas of a 3D cube in a way that is aligned with conceptual metaphors (Marmolejo-Ramos et al., 2018) • Miller et al. (2020): No evidence of conceptual metaphor activation during idiom processing in two priming tasks (eye tracking, lexical decision) Three Challenges to Strong Arguments • Perspective-Taking and Conceptual Metaphors • Passive vs. Active Agent • Mental Simulation of Nonactual Motion Sentences • Enactive perception vs. Visual scanning vs. Imagination • Inter-Individual, Cross-Cultural, and Context-Dependency Linked to the Representation of Abstract Concepts Strong Versions of Embodied Cognition (SVEC) fail to account for or cannot adequately explain the above Khatin-Zadeh et al. (2021) Reflection: Muddiest Point • Think about all the content we covered about conceptual knowledge. Is anything unclear? Anything you want to know more about? • If everything’s clear, great! Let me know the most interesting thing you learned this week (in this class!).