Six views of embodied cognition

Abstract

There is a movement afoot in cognitive science to grant the body a central role in shaping the mind. Proponents of embodied cognition take as their theoretical starting point not a mind working on abstract problems, but a body that requires a mind to make it function. These opening lines by Clark (1998) are typical: "Biological brains are first and foremost the control systems for biological bodies. Biological bodies move and act in rich real-world surroundings" (p. 506).Traditionally, the various branches of cognitive science have viewed the mind as an abstract information processor, whose connections to the outside world were of little theoretical importance. Perceptual and motor systems, though reasonable objects of inquiry in their own right, were not considered relevant to understanding "central" cognitive processes. Instead, they were thought to serve merely as peripheral input and output devices. This stance was evident in the early decades of cognitive psychology, when most theories of human thinking dealt in propositional forms of knowledge. During the same time period, artificial intelligence was dominated by computer models of abstract symbol processing. Philosophy of mind, too, made its contribution to this zeitgeist, most notably in Fodor's (1983) modularity hypothesis. According to Fodor, central cognition is not modular, but its connections to the world are. Perceptual and motor processing are done by informationally encapsulated plug-ins providing sharply limited forms of input and output.However, there is a radically different stance that also has roots in diverse branches of cognitive science. This stance has emphasized sensory and motor functions,as well as their importance for successful interaction with the environment. Early sources include the view of 19th century psychologists that there was no such thing as "imageless thought" (Goodwin, 1999); motor theories of perception such as those suggested by William James and others (see Prinz, 1987, for a review); the developmental psychology of Jean Piaget, which emphasized the emergence of cognitive abilities out of a groundwork of sensorimotor abilities; and the ecological psychology of J. J. Gibson, which viewed perception in terms of affordances-potential interactions with the environment. In the 1980s, linguists began exploring how abstract concepts may be based on metaphors for bodily, physical concepts (e.g., Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). At the same time, within the field of artificial intelligence, behaviorbased robotics began to emphasize routines for interacting with the environment rather than internal representations used for abstract thought (see, e.g., Brooks, 1986).This kind of approach has recently attained high visibility, under the banner of embodied cognition. There is a growing commitment to the idea that the mind must be understood in the context of its relationship to a physical body that interacts with the world. It is argued that we have evolved from creatures whose neural resources were devoted primarily to perceptual and mo...

An Exception to Mental Simulation: No Evidence for Embodied Odor Language

“…Instead, mental simulation should occur automatically and implicitly. This approach is in line with Wilson's (2002) fourth type of embodiment—that is, offline cognition is “body based.” Most evidence for such simulation, however, has focused on the dominant perceptual modality of vision (e.g., Kaschak et al., 2005; Martin, Haxby, Lalonde, Wiggs, & Ungerleider, 1995; Meteyard, Bahrami, & Vigliocco, 2007; Meteyard, Zokaei, Bahrami, & Vigliocco, 2008; Pulvermuller & Hauk, 2006), with the “lower senses,” such as smell, neglected. To understand the evocative olfactory experience invoked by Edward Thomas’s words above, do we also mentally simulate?…”

Coordinate transformations in object recognition.

“…This dependency is more easily compatible with representations that are in a similar format as the visual input, as compared with abstract representations that should-by definition-be independent of image transformations. The notion of imagelike representations corresponds with the proposal that cognitive functions are embodied, that is, are grounded in sensorimotor mechanisms (e.g., Barsalou, 1999;M. Wilson, 2002).…”

Orientation and metacognition in virtual space.

“…This resonates with the vast amount of evidence pointing to the supportive effects of active physical movement and idiothetic cues (Klatzky et al, 1998;Wraga et al, 2004), as well as notions of embodiment (Mallot & Basten, 2009;Wilson, 2002). How we perceive our environment, and how we interact with it, is affected fundamentally by basic sensorial information derived directly from our physical immersion in the environment (Zetzsche, Wolter, & Schill, 2008;Zetzsche et al, 2009).…”