Embodied Cognition: Taking the Next Step

Abstract

Recent years have seen a large amount of empirical studies related to “embodied cognition.” While interesting and valuable, there is something dissatisfying with the current state of affairs in this research domain. Hypotheses tend to be underspecified, testing in general terms for embodied versus disembodied processing. The lack of specificity of current hypotheses can easily lead to an erosion of the embodiment concept, and result in a situation in which essentially any effect is taken as positive evidence. Such erosion is not helpful to the field and does not do justice to the importance of embodiment. Here we want to take stock, and formulate directions for how it can be studied in a more fruitful fashion. As an example we will describe few example studies that have investigated the role of sensori-motor systems in the coding of meaning (“embodied semantics”). Instead of focusing on the dichotomy between embodied and disembodied theories, we suggest that the field move forward and ask how and when sensori-motor systems and behavior are involved in cognition.

Are the motor features of verb meanings represented in the precentral motor cortices? Yes, but within the context of a flexible, multilevel architecture for conceptual knowledge

“…Lebois et al (in press) point out that such variability is far more common than often assumed and that even the most entrenched features of concepts are not always activated in an immediate, automatic manner (see also Willems & Casasanto, 2011;Willems & Francken, 2012;Zwaan, 2014). In the same vein, Binder and Desai (2011, p. 531) make the following remarks about their own model of conceptual knowledge: "All levels are not automatically accessed under all conditions.…”

On the other hand: including left-handers in cognitive neuroscience and neurogenetics

“…Generally speaking, research findings confirm that parts of the sensory or motor cortex show higher activation when people read vision-or action-related text compared with when they read language that is not related to action or to the senses. The interpretation of these findings is a topic of debate [50][51][52] , but this discussion is beyond the scope of this paper. Here, we focus on how findings from lefthanded participants have helped to increase our understanding of the nature of embodied semantic representations at the neural level.…”

Emotional context modulates embodied metaphor comprehension

“…Some previous studies have failed to find sensori-motor cortex involvement during the understanding of action-related language (Postle et al, 2008) or have shown that motor cortex involvement during the comprehension of action verbs depends on task (Desai et al, 2013;Papeo et al, 2009;Sato, 2008). While a lot of discussion has centered around the question whether sensori-motor cortices are important for semantic representations or not, a more fruitful approach seems to be to ask under which circumstances sensori-motor areas play a role in language understanding (Papeo et al, 2009;van Dam et al, 2012;Willems and Casasanto, 2011;Willems and Francken, 2012). The present study adds to this by showing the specific role that emotional context plays in grounding of metaphorical language.…”

“…Such findings are often taken as evidence for the embodiment of word meaning (Barsalou, 2008). While that interpretation is debated (Mahon and Caramazza, 2008;Willems and Casasanto, 2011;Willems and Francken, 2012;Wilson and Golonka, 2013), there is evidence that sensori-motor regions of the brain can be involved in coding word meaning.…”