Embodied cognition
Encyclopedia
Philosophers, psychologist
s, cognitive scientist
s and artificial intelligence researcher
s who study embodied cognition and the embodied mind believe that the nature of the human mind
is largely determined by the form of the human body. They argue that all aspects of cognition, such as idea
s, thought
s, concept
s and categories
are shaped by aspects of the body. These aspects include the perceptual system, the intuitions that underlie the ability to move, activities and interactions with our environment and the naive understanding of the world that is built into the body and the brain.
The embodied mind thesis is opposed to other theories of cognition
such as cognitivism
, computationalism and Cartesian dualism
. The idea has roots in Kant
and 20th century continental philosophy
(such as Merleau-Ponty). The modern version depends on insights drawn from recent research in psychology
, linguistics
, cognitive science
, artificial intelligence
, robotics
and neurobiology.
Embodied cognition is an important topic in social
and cognitive psychology
. Researchers acknowledge the appearance and breadth of definitions of embodied cognition found in cognitive science. The overarching theme of embodied cognition throughout the literature is a reciprocal relationship between thoughts and actions. Embodied cognition reflects the idea that the motor system
influences our cognition, just as the mind influences bodily actions. For example, in one experiment researchers directed participants to hold a pencil in their teeth to engage the facial muscles used when smiling. These participants were quicker to comprehend pleasant sentences than unpleasant sentences. Those holding a pencil in their lips to activate frowning muscles were significantly slower at comprehending pleasant sentences. This illustrates the influence of facial muscle movement on cognition. The mind-body relationship described by embodied cognition is important in decision-making and social interaction among other things. Researchers debate the conclusions drawn about embodied cognition, partly due to differing definitions and research methods.
George Lakoff
(a cognitive scientist and linguist
) and his collaborators (including Mark Johnson
, Mark Turner
, and Rafael E. Núñez
) have written a series of books promoting and expanding the thesis based on discoveries in cognitive science
, such as conceptual metaphor
and image schema
.
Robotics researchers such as Rodney Brooks
, Hans Moravec
and Rolf Pfeifer
have argued that true artificial intelligence
can only be achieved by machines that have sensory
and motor skills and are connected to the world through a body. The insights of these robotics researchers have in turn inspired philosophers like Andy Clark
and Horst Hendriks-Jansen.
Neuroscientists Gerald Edelman
, António Damásio
and others have outlined the connection between the body, individual structures in the brain and aspects of the mind such as consciousness
, emotion
, self-awareness
and will
. Biology
has also inspired Gregory Bateson
, Humberto Maturana
, Francisco Varela
, Eleanor Rosch
and Evan Thompson
to develop a closely related version of the idea, which they call enactivism. Patricia Carpenter
is pursuing a biologically-grounded account of cognition called the "fractal catalytic model". The motor theory of speech perception
proposed by Alvin Liberman
and colleagues at the Haskins Laboratories
argues that the identification of words is embodied in perception of the bodily movements by which spoken words are made.
advocated a remarkably similar embodied view of the mind-body problem that was part of his Universal Natural History and Theory of Heaven
(1755). José Ortega y Gasset
, George Santayana
, Miguel de Unamuno
, Maurice Merleau-Ponty
, Martin Heidegger
and others in the broadly existential
tradition have proposed philosophies of mind influencing the development of the modern 'embodiment' thesis.
The embodiment movement in AI has fueled the embodiment argument in Philosophy, see in particular Andy Clark (1997, 1998, 2008) and Hendriks-Jansen (1996). It has also given emotions a new status in philosophy of mind
as an indispensable constituent, not a non-essential addition to rational intellectual thought.
In Philosophy of Mind, the idea that cognition is embodied is sympathetic with other views of cognition such as situated cognition
or externalism
which is an even more radical move towards a total re-localization of mental processes out of the neural domain. It is important to stress that these views are forms of physicalism
insofar as they maintain that the mind is identical with physical processes, though such processes are external to the boundaries of the nervous system.
can affect processing in visual search
, with more orientation errors for pointing than for grasping. Participants either pointed to or grasped target objects of 2 colors and 2 orientations (45° and 135°). There were randomized numbers of distractors as well (0, 3, 6, or 9), which differed from the target in color, orientation, or both. A tone sounded to inform participants which target orientation to find. Participants kept their eyes on a fixation point until it turned from red to the target color. The screen then lit up and the participants searched for the target, either pointing to it or grasping it (depending on the block). There were 2 blocks for pointing and 2 for grasping, with the order counterbalanced. Each block had 64 trials.
Results from the experiment show that accuracy decreases with an increase in the number of distractors. Overall, participants made more orientation errors than color errors. There was no main effect of accuracy between the pointing and grasping conditions, but participants made significantly less orientation errors in the grasping condition than the pointing condition. Color errors were the same in both conditions. Because orientation is important in grasping an object, these results fit with the researchers' hypothesis that the plan to grasp an object will aid in orientation accuracy. This supports embodied cognition because action intention (planning to grasp an object) can affect visual processing of task-relevant information (orientation).
, which relates to embodied cognition. Researchers randomly assigned college student participants to high-choice, low-choice, and control conditions. The high-choice condition signed a “freedom of choice” consent form indicating their decision to wear a Carmen Miranda
costume and walk across a busy area of campus. Low-choice participants signed an “experimenter choice” consent form, indicating the experimenter assigned the participant to wear the costume. A control group walked across campus but did not wear a costume. At the conclusion of the experiment, each participant completed a survey which asked them to estimate the distance they walked.
The high-choice participants perceived the distance walked as significantly shorter than participants in the low-choice and control groups, even though they walked the same distance. The manipulation caused high-choice participants to feel responsible for the choice to walk in the embarrassing costume. This created cognitive dissonance
, which refers to a discrepancy between attitudes and behaviors. High-choice participants reconciled their thoughts and actions by perceiving the distance as shorter. These results show the ability of internal states to affect perception of physical distance moved, which illustrates the reciprocal relationship of the body and mind in embodied cognition.
of a person in the picture instead of their own. They showed college undergraduate participants 1 of 3 photographs and asked where 1 object in the picture was compared to the other object. For example, if the 2 objects were an apple and a banana, the participants would have to respond to a question about the location of the apple compared to the banana. The photographs either had no person, a person looking at the object, in this case the banana, or a person reaching for the banana. The photograph and question appeared in a larger set of questionnaires not related to the study.
Results show that participants who viewed photographs that included a person were significantly more likely to respond from another's perspective than those who saw photographs with no person. There were no differences in perspective of responses for the person looking versus reaching. Participants who saw the scene without a person were significantly more likely to respond from their own perspective. This means that the presence of a person in the photograph affected the perspective used even though the question focused solely on the two objects. The researchers state that these results suggest disembodied cognition, in which the participants put themselves into the body of the person in the photograph.
comprehension, in this case when sentences were performable by a human, there was a change in participants' overall movement of a pendulum
. Researchers performed an experiment in which college undergraduate participants swung a pendulum while completing a "sentence judgement task." Participants would swing the pendulum with both hands for 10 seconds before a prompt and then a sentence would appear on the screen until the participant responded. In the control condition, participants swung the pendulum without performing the "sentence judgement task." Each trial had half "plausible" and half "implausible" sentences. The "plausible" sentences made sense semantically, while the "implausible" ones did not. The "performable" sentences could be performed by a human, while the "inanimate" sentences could not. Participants responded by saying "yes" to the "plausible" sentences.
Results show a significant "relative phase shift," or overall change in movement of the swinging pendulum, for the "performable" sentences. This change did not occur for "inaminate" sentences or the control condition. The researchers did not expect an overall phase shift, instead they expected a change in the variability of movement, or the "standard deviation
of relative phase shift." Although not entirely expected, these results support embodied cognition and show that the motor system is involved in the understanding of language. The researchers suggest that the nature of this relationship needs to be further studied to determine the exact correlation
this task has to bi-manual motor movements.
Some researchers extend embodied cognition to include language. They describe language as a tool that aids in broadening our sense of body. For instance, when asked to identify “this” object, participants most often choose an object near to them. Conversely, when asked to identify “that” object, participants choose an object further away from them. Language allows us to distinguish between distances in more complex ways than the simple perceptual difference between near and far objects.
and embodied cognition illustrates that people remember more of the gist of a story when they physically act it out. Researchers divided female participants randomly into 5 groups, which were "Read Only," "Writing," "Collaborative Discussion," "Independent Discussion," and "Improvisation
." All participants received a monologue
about teen addiction and were told to pay attention to details about the character and action in the monologue. Participants were given 5 minutes to read the monologue twice, unaware of a future recall test. In the "Read Only" condition participants filled out unrelated questionnaires after reading the monologue. In the "Writing" condition participants responded to 5 questions about the story from the perspective of the character in the monologue. They had 6 minutes to answer each question. In the "Collaborative Discussion" condition participants responded from the character's perspective to the same questions as the "Writing" group, but in groups of 4 or 5 women. They were also given 6 minutes per question and everyone participated in answering each question. The "Independent Discussion" condition was the same as the "Collaborative Discussion," except 1 person answered each question. In the "Improvisation" condition participants acted out 5 scenes from the monologue in groups of 5 women. The researchers suggest that this condition involves embodied cognition and will produce better memory for the monologue. Every participant played the main character and a supporting character once. Participants were given short prompts from lines in the monologue, which were excluded from the memory test. Participants had 2 minutes to choose characters and 4 minutes for improvisations. The recall test was the monologue with 96 words or phrases missing. Participants had to fill in the blanks as accurately as possible.
Researchers gave the recall test to a group who did not read the monologue. They scored significantly lower than the other groups, which indicated that guessing was not easy. In coding the answers to the recall test, exact words were labeled "Verbatim", and correct content but varied wording was labeled "Gist". The combination of "Verbatim" and "Gist" was called "Total Memory." The "Improvisational" group had more "Gist" memories than any other group and had more "Total Memory" than both of the discussion groups. The results fit the researchers' hypothesis that the "Improvisational" group would remember more because they actively rehearsed the information from the monologue. Although other groups had also elaborately encoded the information, the "Improvisation" group remembered significantly more than the discussion groups and marginally more than the "Reading Only" and "Writing" groups. Simply experiencing the monologue in an active way aids in remembering the "Gist." There were no differences across groups for "Verbatim" memory, which they suggest could take longer than the limited time during the experiment to develop.
, while in the second experiment the central word had a negative valence. In the third experiment, the center of the screen had an empty box.
As predicted, in the first experiment participants in the "positive toward condition" responded significantly faster than those in the "negative toward condition." This fits the approach/avoidance effect in embodied cognition, which states that people are faster to approach positive things and avoid negative ones. In the second experiment, researchers expected participants in the "negative toward condition" to be faster, yet those in the "positive toward condition" responded significantly faster. Although effects were smaller in the third experiment, participants in the "positive toward condition" were still faster. Overall, people were faster in the "positive toward condition," regardless of the valence of the central word. Despite mixed results regarding the researchers' expectations, they maintain that the motor system is important in processing higher level representations such as the action goal. In this study, participants showed strong approach effects in the "positive toward condition," which supports embodied cognition.
As part of a larger study, researchers separated participants into 5 groups with different instructions. In the "approach" condition, participants were instructed to imagine physically moving the product toward them, but in the "avoid" condition, participants had to imagine moving the product away from them. In the "control" condition, participants were instructed to simply observe the product. The "correction" condition involved the same instructions as the approach condition, except participants were told that the body can affect judgment. In the "approach information" condition, participants had to list 5 reasons why they would obtain the product. After viewing a picture of an aversive product, participants rated on a scale of 1 to 7 how desirable the product was and how much they approached of or avoided the product. They also provided how much they would pay for the product.
An approach/avoidance effect was found in relation to product evaluation. Participants in the "approach" condition liked the aversive product significantly more and would pay more for it. There were no differences between the "avoidance," "control," "correction," and "approach information" conditions. Simulation of approach can affect liking and willingness to pay for a product, but the effect can be reversed if the person knows about this influence. This supports embodied cognition.
for the Red Cross in sealed envelopes. They were told to return the envelope regardless of whether they donated. They also filled out questionnaires about their feelings about the Red Cross, their tendency to donate, their feelings about Haiti, what they thought the purpose of the study was, etc.
Significantly more participants in the "muscle-firming" condition than in the "control" condition donated money. Condition did not effect the actual amount donated when participants chose to donate. As the researchers predicted, the "muscle-firming" condition helped participants get over their physical aversion to viewing the devastation in Haiti and spend money. Muscle-firming in this experiment may also be related to an increase in self control, suggesting embodied cognition can play a role in self-regulation.
Some suggest that the embodied mind serves self-regulatory processes by combining movement and cognition to reach a goal. Thus, the embodied mind has a facilitative effect. Some judgments, such as the emotion of a face, are detected more quickly when a participant mimics the facial expression that is being evaluated. Individuals holding a pen in their mouths to freeze their facial muscles and make them unable to mimic the expression were less able to judge emotions. Goal-relevant actions may be encouraged by embodied cognition, as evidenced by the automated approach and avoidance of certain environmental cues. Embodied cognition is also influenced by the situation. If one moves in a way previously associated with danger, the body may require a greater level of information processing
than if the body moves in a way associated with a benign situation.
paradigm.
There is a significant correlation between self-disclosure and positive emotions towards the other participant. Participants randomly assigned to the self-disclosure task displayed more behavioral synchrony (rated by independent judges watching the tapes of each condition on mute) and reported more positive emotions than the control group. Since bodily movements influence the psychological experience of the task, the relationship between self-disclosure and positive feelings towards one's partner may be an example of embodied cognition.
. The evolutionary perspective cites language, both spoken and written, as types of embodied cognition. Pacing and non-verbal communication reflect embodied cognition in spoken language. Technical aspects of written language, such as italics, all caps, and emoticons promote an inner voice and thereby a sense of feeling rather than thinking about a written message.
and his collaborators have developed several lines evidence that suggest that people use their understanding of familiar physical objects, actions and situations (such as containers, spaces, trajectories) to understand other more complex domains. Lakoff argues that all cognition is based on knowledge that comes from the body and that other domains are mapped onto our embodied knowledge using a combination of conceptual metaphor
, image schema
and prototypes
.
showed that humans use metaphor ubiquitously. For example, if we wish to discuss the status and history of a love affair, people will use language drawn from our knowledge of journeys, such as "we arrived at a crossroads," "we parted ways", "we hit the rocks" (as in a sea journey), "she's in the driver's seat", or, simply, "we're together". In cases like these, something complex (a love affair) is described in terms of something that can be done with a body (travel through space).
Lakoff and his collaborators have collected thousands of examples of conceptual metaphors in many domains.
proposed that a machine may need a human-like body to think and speak:
Embodiment theory was brought into Artificial Intelligence
most notably by Rodney Brooks
in the 1980s. Brooks showed that robot
s could be more effective if they 'thought' (planned or processed
) and perceived
as little as possible. The robot's intelligence is geared towards only handling the minimal amount of information necessary to make its behavior
be appropriate and/or as desired by its creator. Brooks (and others) have claimed that all autonomous agents
need to be both embodied and situated
. They claim that this is the only way to achieve strong AI
.
, such as the proposals of Gerald Edelman
concerning how mathematical and computational models such as neuronal group selection and neural degeneracy result in emergent categorization. Drawing on experimental psychology and linguistics as well as Edelman and other cognitive neuroscientists, Rohrer (2005) discusses how both our neural and developmental embodiment shape both our mental and linguistic categorizations. The degree of thought abstraction has been found to be associated with physical distance which then affects associated ideas and perception of risk.
This view is compatible with some views of cognition promoted in neuropsychology
, such as the theories of consciousness of Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
, Gerald Edelman
, and Antonio Damasio
.
used by researchers. There is much evidence for embodied cognition, although interpretation of results and their significance may be disputed. Researchers continue to search for the best way to study and interpret embodied cognition.
. It may be impossible to know when a pre-verbal infant is a "pure model" of embodied cognition, since infants experience dramatic changes in social behavior throughout development. A 9-month old has reached a different developmental stage than a 2-month old. Looking-time and reaching measures of embodied cognition may not represent embodied cognition since infants develop object permanence
of objects they can see before they develop object permanence with objects they can touch. True embodied cognition suggests that children would have to first physically engage with an object to understand object permanence.
The response to this critique is that infants are "ideal models" of embodied cognition. Infants are the best models because they utilize symbols less than adults do. Looking-time could likely be a better measure of embodied cognition than reaching because infants have not developed certain fine motor skills yet. Infants may first develop a passive mode of embodied cognition before they develop the active mode involving fine motor movements.
are evolutionary epistemologists
such as Karl Popper
and Donald T. Campbell
. In their view it is the action and the form of the body which are the sources of the knowledge for any organism as long as it reflects the environment well enough for the organism to be able to survive in it and be competitive enough to reproduce at a sustainable rate in it. Blind variation and selective retention is the universal two-step mechanism which over the course of time enables knowledge to be formed filogenetically and ontogenetically, and simultaneously on different levels, both the hard-wired knowledge and the 'softer' ones.
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
s, cognitive scientist
Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
s and artificial intelligence researcher
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
s who study embodied cognition and the embodied mind believe that the nature of the human mind
Mind
The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different traditions, ranging from panpsychism and animism to traditional and organized religious views, as well as secular and materialist philosophies. Most agree that minds are constituted by conscious experience and intelligent...
is largely determined by the form of the human body. They argue that all aspects of cognition, such as idea
Idea
In the most narrow sense, an idea is just whatever is before the mind when one thinks. Very often, ideas are construed as representational images; i.e. images of some object. In other contexts, ideas are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear as images...
s, thought
Thought
"Thought" generally refers to any mental or intellectual activity involving an individual's subjective consciousness. It can refer either to the act of thinking or the resulting ideas or arrangements of ideas. Similar concepts include cognition, sentience, consciousness, and imagination...
s, concept
Concept
The word concept is used in ordinary language as well as in almost all academic disciplines. Particularly in philosophy, psychology and cognitive sciences the term is much used and much discussed. WordNet defines concept: "conception, construct ". However, the meaning of the term concept is much...
s and categories
Categorization
Categorization is the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated and understood. Categorization implies that objects are grouped into categories, usually for some specific purpose. Ideally, a category illuminates a relationship between the subjects and objects of knowledge...
are shaped by aspects of the body. These aspects include the perceptual system, the intuitions that underlie the ability to move, activities and interactions with our environment and the naive understanding of the world that is built into the body and the brain.
The embodied mind thesis is opposed to other theories of cognition
Cognition
In science, cognition refers to mental processes. These processes include attention, remembering, producing and understanding language, solving problems, and making decisions. Cognition is studied in various disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science...
such as cognitivism
Cognitivism (psychology)
In psychology, cognitivism is a theoretical framework for understanding the mind that came into usage in the 1950s. The movement was a response to behaviorism, which cognitivists said neglected to explain cognition...
, computationalism and Cartesian dualism
Dualism (philosophy of mind)
In philosophy of mind, dualism is a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter, which begins with the claim that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical....
. The idea has roots in Kant
KANT
KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
and 20th century continental philosophy
Continental philosophy
Continental philosophy, in contemporary usage, refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland Europe. This sense of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who used it to refer to a range of thinkers and...
(such as Merleau-Ponty). The modern version depends on insights drawn from recent research in psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
, linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, cognitive science
Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
, artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
, robotics
Robotics
Robotics is the branch of technology that deals with the design, construction, operation, structural disposition, manufacture and application of robots...
and neurobiology.
Embodied cognition is an important topic in social
Social psychology
Social psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. By this definition, scientific refers to the empirical method of investigation. The terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviors include all...
and cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is a subdiscipline of psychology exploring internal mental processes.It is the study of how people perceive, remember, think, speak, and solve problems.Cognitive psychology differs from previous psychological approaches in two key ways....
. Researchers acknowledge the appearance and breadth of definitions of embodied cognition found in cognitive science. The overarching theme of embodied cognition throughout the literature is a reciprocal relationship between thoughts and actions. Embodied cognition reflects the idea that the motor system
Motor system
The motor system is the part of the central nervous system that is involved with movement. It consists of the pyramidal and extrapyramidal system....
influences our cognition, just as the mind influences bodily actions. For example, in one experiment researchers directed participants to hold a pencil in their teeth to engage the facial muscles used when smiling. These participants were quicker to comprehend pleasant sentences than unpleasant sentences. Those holding a pencil in their lips to activate frowning muscles were significantly slower at comprehending pleasant sentences. This illustrates the influence of facial muscle movement on cognition. The mind-body relationship described by embodied cognition is important in decision-making and social interaction among other things. Researchers debate the conclusions drawn about embodied cognition, partly due to differing definitions and research methods.
George Lakoff
George Lakoff
George P. Lakoff is an American cognitive linguist and professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1972...
(a cognitive scientist and linguist
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
) and his collaborators (including Mark Johnson
Mark Johnson (professor)
Mark L. Johnson is Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oregon. He is well-known for contributions to embodied philosophy, cognitive science and cognitive linguistics, some of which he has coauthored with George Lakoff such as...
, Mark Turner
Mark Turner (cognitive scientist)
Mark Turner is a cognitive scientist, linguist, and author. He is Institute Professor and Professor of Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University, where he was for two years Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences...
, and Rafael E. Núñez
Rafael E. Núñez
Rafael E. Núñez is a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego and a proponent of embodied cognition. He co-authored Where Mathematics Comes From with George Lakoff.-External links:*...
) have written a series of books promoting and expanding the thesis based on discoveries in cognitive science
Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
, such as conceptual metaphor
Conceptual metaphor
In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor, or cognitive metaphor, refers to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain, in terms of another, for example, understanding quantity in terms of directionality . A conceptual domain can be any coherent organization of human experience...
and image schema
Image schema
An image schema is a recurring structure within our cognitive processes which establishes patterns of understanding and reasoning. Image schemas are formed from our bodily interactions, from linguistic experience, and from historical context...
.
Robotics researchers such as Rodney Brooks
Rodney Brooks
Rodney Allen Brooks is the former Panasonic professor of robotics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since 1986 he has authored a series of highly influential papers which have inaugurated a fundamental shift in artificial intelligence research...
, Hans Moravec
Hans Moravec
Hans Moravec is an adjunct faculty member at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. He is known for his work on robotics, artificial intelligence, and writings on the impact of technology. Moravec also is a futurist with many of his publications and predictions focusing on...
and Rolf Pfeifer
Rolf Pfeifer
Rolf Pfeifer is professor of computer science at the , University of Zurich, and director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He has a Ph.D. in computer science from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland...
have argued that true artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
can only be achieved by machines that have sensory
Sensory
Sensory may refer to:relating to senses or smellIn biology:* Sensory preference* Sensory system, part of the nervous system of organisms* Sensory neuron, nerve cell responsible for transmitting information about external stimuli...
and motor skills and are connected to the world through a body. The insights of these robotics researchers have in turn inspired philosophers like Andy Clark
Andy Clark
Andy Clark is a Professor of Philosophy and Chair in Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Before this he was director of the Cognitive Science Program at Indiana University in Bloomington. Previously, he taught at Washington University at St. Louis and the University...
and Horst Hendriks-Jansen.
Neuroscientists Gerald Edelman
Gerald Edelman
Gerald Maurice Edelman is an American biologist who shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work with Rodney Robert Porter on the immune system. Edelman's Nobel Prize-winning research concerned discovery of the structure of antibody molecules...
, António Damásio
Antonio Damasio
Antonio Damasio is David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Southern California, where he heads USC's Brain and Creativity Institute and Adjunct Professor at the Salk Institute. Prior to taking up his posts at USC, in 2005, Damasio was M.W...
and others have outlined the connection between the body, individual structures in the brain and aspects of the mind such as consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
, emotion
Emotion
Emotion is a complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical and environmental influences. In humans, emotion fundamentally involves "physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience." Emotion is associated with mood,...
, self-awareness
Self-awareness
Self-awareness is the capacity for introspection and the ability to reconcile oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals...
and will
Will (philosophy)
Will, in philosophical discussions, consonant with a common English usage, refers to a property of the mind, and an attribute of acts intentionally performed. Actions made according to a person's will are called "willing" or "voluntary" and sometimes pejoratively "willful"...
. Biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
has also inspired Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson was an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. He had a natural ability to recognize order and pattern in the universe...
, Humberto Maturana
Humberto Maturana
Humberto Maturana is a Chilean biologist and philosopher. He is considered a member of the second wave of cybernetics, known for developing a theory of autopoiesis about the nature of reflexive feedback control in living systems.- Biography :After completing secondary school at the Liceo Manuel de...
, Francisco Varela
Francisco Varela
Francisco Javier Varela García , was a Chilean biologist, philosopher and neuroscientist who, together with his teacher Humberto Maturana, is best known for introducing the concept of autopoiesis to biology.-Biography:...
, Eleanor Rosch
Eleanor Rosch
Eleanor Rosch is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in cognitive psychology and primarily known for her work on categorization, in particular her prototype theory, which has profoundly influenced the field of cognitive psychology...
and Evan Thompson
Evan Thompson
Evan Thompson is professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto. He writes about cognitive science, phenomenology, and the philosophy of mind....
to develop a closely related version of the idea, which they call enactivism. Patricia Carpenter
Patricia Carpenter
Patricia Carpenter is Lee and Marge Gregg Professor of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research focuses on the organization of the cognitive systems in immediate thought, for example, the processes that underlie problem solving and sentence comprehension...
is pursuing a biologically-grounded account of cognition called the "fractal catalytic model". The motor theory of speech perception
Motor theory of speech perception
thumb|250px|right|When we hear [[speech|spoken words]] we sense that they are made of auditory [[sound]]s. The motor theory of speech perception argues that behind the sounds we hear are the intended movements of the [[vocal tract]] that [[pronunciation|pronounces]] them.The motor theory of speech...
proposed by Alvin Liberman
Alvin Liberman
Alvin Meyer Liberman was an American psychologist whose ideas set the agenda for fifty years of research in the psychology of speech perception and laid the groundwork for modern computer speech synthesis and the understanding of critical issues in cognitive science...
and colleagues at the Haskins Laboratories
Haskins Laboratories
Haskins Laboratories is an independent, international, multidisciplinary community of researchers conducting basic research on spoken and written language. Founded in 1935 and located in New Haven, Connecticut since 1970, Haskins Laboratories is a private, non-profit research institute with a...
argues that the identification of words is embodied in perception of the bodily movements by which spoken words are made.
Philosophy
In his pre-critical period, philosopher Immanuel KantImmanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
advocated a remarkably similar embodied view of the mind-body problem that was part of his Universal Natural History and Theory of Heaven
Universal Natural History and Theory of Heaven
Universal Natural History and Theory of Heaven is a work written by Immanuel Kant in 1755.According to Kant, our solar system is merely a smaller version of the fixed star systems, such as the Milky Way and other galaxies...
(1755). José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset was a Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist working during the first half of the 20th century while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism and dictatorship. He was, along with Nietzsche, a proponent of the idea of perspectivism.-Biography:José Ortega y Gasset was...
, George Santayana
George Santayana
George Santayana was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. A lifelong Spanish citizen, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States and identified himself as an American. He wrote in English and is generally considered an American man of letters...
, Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo was a Spanish essayist, novelist, poet, playwright and philosopher.-Biography:...
, Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Karl Marx, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger in addition to being closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir...
, Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
and others in the broadly existential
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
tradition have proposed philosophies of mind influencing the development of the modern 'embodiment' thesis.
The embodiment movement in AI has fueled the embodiment argument in Philosophy, see in particular Andy Clark (1997, 1998, 2008) and Hendriks-Jansen (1996). It has also given emotions a new status in philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...
as an indispensable constituent, not a non-essential addition to rational intellectual thought.
In Philosophy of Mind, the idea that cognition is embodied is sympathetic with other views of cognition such as situated cognition
Situated cognition
Situated cognition poses that knowing is inseparable from doing by arguing that all knowledge is situated in activity bound to social, cultural and physical contexts....
or externalism
Externalism
Externalism is a group of positions in the philosophy of mind which hold that the mind is not only the result of what is going on inside the nervous system but also of what either occur or exist outside the subject. It is often contrasted with internalism which holds that the mind emerges out of...
which is an even more radical move towards a total re-localization of mental processes out of the neural domain. It is important to stress that these views are forms of physicalism
Physicalism
Physicalism is a philosophical position holding that everything which exists is no more extensive than its physical properties; that is, that there are no kinds of things other than physical things...
insofar as they maintain that the mind is identical with physical processes, though such processes are external to the boundaries of the nervous system.
Visual Search
One embodied cognition study shows that action intentionIntention
Intention is an agent's specific purpose in performing an action or series of actions, the end or goal that is aimed at. Outcomes that are unanticipated or unforeseen are known as unintended consequences....
can affect processing in visual search
Visual search
Visual search is a type of perceptual task requiring attention that typically involves an active scan of the visual environment for a particular object or feature among other objects or features . Visual search can take place either with or without eye movements...
, with more orientation errors for pointing than for grasping. Participants either pointed to or grasped target objects of 2 colors and 2 orientations (45° and 135°). There were randomized numbers of distractors as well (0, 3, 6, or 9), which differed from the target in color, orientation, or both. A tone sounded to inform participants which target orientation to find. Participants kept their eyes on a fixation point until it turned from red to the target color. The screen then lit up and the participants searched for the target, either pointing to it or grasping it (depending on the block). There were 2 blocks for pointing and 2 for grasping, with the order counterbalanced. Each block had 64 trials.
Results from the experiment show that accuracy decreases with an increase in the number of distractors. Overall, participants made more orientation errors than color errors. There was no main effect of accuracy between the pointing and grasping conditions, but participants made significantly less orientation errors in the grasping condition than the pointing condition. Color errors were the same in both conditions. Because orientation is important in grasping an object, these results fit with the researchers' hypothesis that the plan to grasp an object will aid in orientation accuracy. This supports embodied cognition because action intention (planning to grasp an object) can affect visual processing of task-relevant information (orientation).
Distance Perception
Internal states can affect distance perceptionPerception
Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...
, which relates to embodied cognition. Researchers randomly assigned college student participants to high-choice, low-choice, and control conditions. The high-choice condition signed a “freedom of choice” consent form indicating their decision to wear a Carmen Miranda
Carmen Miranda
Carmen Miranda, GCIH was a Portuguese-born Brazilian samba singer, Broadway actress and Hollywood film star popular in the 1940s and 1950s. She was, by some accounts, the highest-earning woman in the United States and noted for her signature fruit hat outfit she wore in the 1943 movie The Gang's...
costume and walk across a busy area of campus. Low-choice participants signed an “experimenter choice” consent form, indicating the experimenter assigned the participant to wear the costume. A control group walked across campus but did not wear a costume. At the conclusion of the experiment, each participant completed a survey which asked them to estimate the distance they walked.
The high-choice participants perceived the distance walked as significantly shorter than participants in the low-choice and control groups, even though they walked the same distance. The manipulation caused high-choice participants to feel responsible for the choice to walk in the embarrassing costume. This created cognitive dissonance
Cognitive dissonance
Cognitive dissonance is a discomfort caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance. They do this by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and actions. Dissonance is also reduced by justifying,...
, which refers to a discrepancy between attitudes and behaviors. High-choice participants reconciled their thoughts and actions by perceiving the distance as shorter. These results show the ability of internal states to affect perception of physical distance moved, which illustrates the reciprocal relationship of the body and mind in embodied cognition.
Perspective
Researchers have found that when making judgements about objects in photographs, people will take the perspectivePerspective
- Literally, in visual topics :* Perspective , the way in which objects appear to the eye.* Perspective , representing the effects of visual perspective in graphic arts- Metaphorically, in relation to cognitive topics :...
of a person in the picture instead of their own. They showed college undergraduate participants 1 of 3 photographs and asked where 1 object in the picture was compared to the other object. For example, if the 2 objects were an apple and a banana, the participants would have to respond to a question about the location of the apple compared to the banana. The photographs either had no person, a person looking at the object, in this case the banana, or a person reaching for the banana. The photograph and question appeared in a larger set of questionnaires not related to the study.
Results show that participants who viewed photographs that included a person were significantly more likely to respond from another's perspective than those who saw photographs with no person. There were no differences in perspective of responses for the person looking versus reaching. Participants who saw the scene without a person were significantly more likely to respond from their own perspective. This means that the presence of a person in the photograph affected the perspective used even though the question focused solely on the two objects. The researchers state that these results suggest disembodied cognition, in which the participants put themselves into the body of the person in the photograph.
Language Comprehension
The motor system is involved in languageLanguage
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
comprehension, in this case when sentences were performable by a human, there was a change in participants' overall movement of a pendulum
Pendulum
A pendulum is a weight suspended from a pivot so that it can swing freely. When a pendulum is displaced from its resting equilibrium position, it is subject to a restoring force due to gravity that will accelerate it back toward the equilibrium position...
. Researchers performed an experiment in which college undergraduate participants swung a pendulum while completing a "sentence judgement task." Participants would swing the pendulum with both hands for 10 seconds before a prompt and then a sentence would appear on the screen until the participant responded. In the control condition, participants swung the pendulum without performing the "sentence judgement task." Each trial had half "plausible" and half "implausible" sentences. The "plausible" sentences made sense semantically, while the "implausible" ones did not. The "performable" sentences could be performed by a human, while the "inanimate" sentences could not. Participants responded by saying "yes" to the "plausible" sentences.
Results show a significant "relative phase shift," or overall change in movement of the swinging pendulum, for the "performable" sentences. This change did not occur for "inaminate" sentences or the control condition. The researchers did not expect an overall phase shift, instead they expected a change in the variability of movement, or the "standard deviation
Standard deviation
Standard deviation is a widely used measure of variability or diversity used in statistics and probability theory. It shows how much variation or "dispersion" there is from the average...
of relative phase shift." Although not entirely expected, these results support embodied cognition and show that the motor system is involved in the understanding of language. The researchers suggest that the nature of this relationship needs to be further studied to determine the exact correlation
Correlation
In statistics, dependence refers to any statistical relationship between two random variables or two sets of data. Correlation refers to any of a broad class of statistical relationships involving dependence....
this task has to bi-manual motor movements.
Some researchers extend embodied cognition to include language. They describe language as a tool that aids in broadening our sense of body. For instance, when asked to identify “this” object, participants most often choose an object near to them. Conversely, when asked to identify “that” object, participants choose an object further away from them. Language allows us to distinguish between distances in more complex ways than the simple perceptual difference between near and far objects.
Memory
A study examining memoryMemory
In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing memory....
and embodied cognition illustrates that people remember more of the gist of a story when they physically act it out. Researchers divided female participants randomly into 5 groups, which were "Read Only," "Writing," "Collaborative Discussion," "Independent Discussion," and "Improvisation
Improvisation
Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or...
." All participants received a monologue
Monologue
In theatre, a monologue is a speech presented by a single character, most often to express their thoughts aloud, though sometimes also to directly address another character or the audience. Monologues are common across the range of dramatic media...
about teen addiction and were told to pay attention to details about the character and action in the monologue. Participants were given 5 minutes to read the monologue twice, unaware of a future recall test. In the "Read Only" condition participants filled out unrelated questionnaires after reading the monologue. In the "Writing" condition participants responded to 5 questions about the story from the perspective of the character in the monologue. They had 6 minutes to answer each question. In the "Collaborative Discussion" condition participants responded from the character's perspective to the same questions as the "Writing" group, but in groups of 4 or 5 women. They were also given 6 minutes per question and everyone participated in answering each question. The "Independent Discussion" condition was the same as the "Collaborative Discussion," except 1 person answered each question. In the "Improvisation" condition participants acted out 5 scenes from the monologue in groups of 5 women. The researchers suggest that this condition involves embodied cognition and will produce better memory for the monologue. Every participant played the main character and a supporting character once. Participants were given short prompts from lines in the monologue, which were excluded from the memory test. Participants had 2 minutes to choose characters and 4 minutes for improvisations. The recall test was the monologue with 96 words or phrases missing. Participants had to fill in the blanks as accurately as possible.
Researchers gave the recall test to a group who did not read the monologue. They scored significantly lower than the other groups, which indicated that guessing was not easy. In coding the answers to the recall test, exact words were labeled "Verbatim", and correct content but varied wording was labeled "Gist". The combination of "Verbatim" and "Gist" was called "Total Memory." The "Improvisational" group had more "Gist" memories than any other group and had more "Total Memory" than both of the discussion groups. The results fit the researchers' hypothesis that the "Improvisational" group would remember more because they actively rehearsed the information from the monologue. Although other groups had also elaborately encoded the information, the "Improvisation" group remembered significantly more than the discussion groups and marginally more than the "Reading Only" and "Writing" groups. Simply experiencing the monologue in an active way aids in remembering the "Gist." There were no differences across groups for "Verbatim" memory, which they suggest could take longer than the limited time during the experiment to develop.
Approach and Avoidance
In research focused on the approach and avoidance effect, people showed an approach effect for positive words. In the "positive toward condition," participants moved positive words toward the center of the screen and negative words away. In the "negative toward condition," participants moved negative words toward the center and positive words away. Participants were given feedback about their accuracy at the end of each of the 4 experimental blocks. In the first experiment the word at the center of the screen had a positive valenceValence
-Chemistry and physics:* Valence * Valence bond theory in chemistry* Valence shell in chemistry* Valence band in physics* Valence quarks in particle physics-In other sciences:* Valency...
, while in the second experiment the central word had a negative valence. In the third experiment, the center of the screen had an empty box.
As predicted, in the first experiment participants in the "positive toward condition" responded significantly faster than those in the "negative toward condition." This fits the approach/avoidance effect in embodied cognition, which states that people are faster to approach positive things and avoid negative ones. In the second experiment, researchers expected participants in the "negative toward condition" to be faster, yet those in the "positive toward condition" responded significantly faster. Although effects were smaller in the third experiment, participants in the "positive toward condition" were still faster. Overall, people were faster in the "positive toward condition," regardless of the valence of the central word. Despite mixed results regarding the researchers' expectations, they maintain that the motor system is important in processing higher level representations such as the action goal. In this study, participants showed strong approach effects in the "positive toward condition," which supports embodied cognition.
As part of a larger study, researchers separated participants into 5 groups with different instructions. In the "approach" condition, participants were instructed to imagine physically moving the product toward them, but in the "avoid" condition, participants had to imagine moving the product away from them. In the "control" condition, participants were instructed to simply observe the product. The "correction" condition involved the same instructions as the approach condition, except participants were told that the body can affect judgment. In the "approach information" condition, participants had to list 5 reasons why they would obtain the product. After viewing a picture of an aversive product, participants rated on a scale of 1 to 7 how desirable the product was and how much they approached of or avoided the product. They also provided how much they would pay for the product.
An approach/avoidance effect was found in relation to product evaluation. Participants in the "approach" condition liked the aversive product significantly more and would pay more for it. There were no differences between the "avoidance," "control," "correction," and "approach information" conditions. Simulation of approach can affect liking and willingness to pay for a product, but the effect can be reversed if the person knows about this influence. This supports embodied cognition.
Self-Regulation
As part of a larger study, one experiment randomly assigned college undergraduates to 2 groups. In the "muscle-firming" condition participants grasped a pen in their hand, while in the "control" condition participants held the pen in their fingers. The participants were then asked to fill out donations to HaitiHaiti
Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
for the Red Cross in sealed envelopes. They were told to return the envelope regardless of whether they donated. They also filled out questionnaires about their feelings about the Red Cross, their tendency to donate, their feelings about Haiti, what they thought the purpose of the study was, etc.
Significantly more participants in the "muscle-firming" condition than in the "control" condition donated money. Condition did not effect the actual amount donated when participants chose to donate. As the researchers predicted, the "muscle-firming" condition helped participants get over their physical aversion to viewing the devastation in Haiti and spend money. Muscle-firming in this experiment may also be related to an increase in self control, suggesting embodied cognition can play a role in self-regulation.
Some suggest that the embodied mind serves self-regulatory processes by combining movement and cognition to reach a goal. Thus, the embodied mind has a facilitative effect. Some judgments, such as the emotion of a face, are detected more quickly when a participant mimics the facial expression that is being evaluated. Individuals holding a pen in their mouths to freeze their facial muscles and make them unable to mimic the expression were less able to judge emotions. Goal-relevant actions may be encouraged by embodied cognition, as evidenced by the automated approach and avoidance of certain environmental cues. Embodied cognition is also influenced by the situation. If one moves in a way previously associated with danger, the body may require a greater level of information processing
Information processing
Information processing is the change of information in any manner detectable by an observer. As such, it is a process which describes everything which happens in the universe, from the falling of a rock to the printing of a text file from a digital computer system...
than if the body moves in a way associated with a benign situation.
Social Psychology
Some social psychologists examined embodied cognition and hypothesized that embodied cognition would be supported by embodied rapport. Embodied rapport would be demonstrated by pairs of same-sex strangers using Aron’s paradigm, which instructs participants to alternate asking certain questions and to progressively self-disclose. The researchers predicted that participants would mimic each other’s movements, reflecting embodied cognition. Half the participants completed a control task of reading and editing a scientific article, while half the participants completed a shortened version of Aron’s self-disclosureSelf-disclosure
Self-disclosure is both the conscious and subconscious act of revealing more about oneself to others. This may include, but is not limited to, thoughts, feelings, aspirations, goals, failures, successes, fears, dreams as well as one's likes, dislikes, and favorites.Typically, a self-disclosure...
paradigm.
There is a significant correlation between self-disclosure and positive emotions towards the other participant. Participants randomly assigned to the self-disclosure task displayed more behavioral synchrony (rated by independent judges watching the tapes of each condition on mute) and reported more positive emotions than the control group. Since bodily movements influence the psychological experience of the task, the relationship between self-disclosure and positive feelings towards one's partner may be an example of embodied cognition.
Evolutionary View of Embodied Cognition
Embodied cognition may also be defined from the perspective of evolutionary psychologists. Evolutionary psychologists view emotion as an important self-regulatory aspect of embodied cognition, and emotion as a motivator towards goal-relevant action. Emotion helps drive adaptive behaviorAdaptive behavior
Adaptive behavior is a type of behavior that is used to adjust to another type of behavior or situation. This is often characterized by a kind of behavior that allows an individual to change an unconstructive or disruptive behavior to something more constructive. These behaviors are most often...
. The evolutionary perspective cites language, both spoken and written, as types of embodied cognition. Pacing and non-verbal communication reflect embodied cognition in spoken language. Technical aspects of written language, such as italics, all caps, and emoticons promote an inner voice and thereby a sense of feeling rather than thinking about a written message.
Cognitive science and Linguistics
George LakoffGeorge Lakoff
George P. Lakoff is an American cognitive linguist and professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1972...
and his collaborators have developed several lines evidence that suggest that people use their understanding of familiar physical objects, actions and situations (such as containers, spaces, trajectories) to understand other more complex domains. Lakoff argues that all cognition is based on knowledge that comes from the body and that other domains are mapped onto our embodied knowledge using a combination of conceptual metaphor
Conceptual metaphor
In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor, or cognitive metaphor, refers to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain, in terms of another, for example, understanding quantity in terms of directionality . A conceptual domain can be any coherent organization of human experience...
, image schema
Image schema
An image schema is a recurring structure within our cognitive processes which establishes patterns of understanding and reasoning. Image schemas are formed from our bodily interactions, from linguistic experience, and from historical context...
and prototypes
Prototype Theory
Prototype theory is a mode of graded categorization in cognitive science, where some members of a category are more central than others. For example, when asked to give an example of the concept furniture, chair is more frequently...
.
Conceptual metaphor
Lakoff and Mark JohnsonMark Johnson
Mark Johnson may refer to:Academics*Mark Johnson , philosophy professor*Mark H. Johnson , developmental neuroscience professorSports*In baseball:**Mark Johnson...
showed that humans use metaphor ubiquitously. For example, if we wish to discuss the status and history of a love affair, people will use language drawn from our knowledge of journeys, such as "we arrived at a crossroads," "we parted ways", "we hit the rocks" (as in a sea journey), "she's in the driver's seat", or, simply, "we're together". In cases like these, something complex (a love affair) is described in terms of something that can be done with a body (travel through space).
Lakoff and his collaborators have collected thousands of examples of conceptual metaphors in many domains.
Artificial intelligence and robotics
In 1950, Alan TuringAlan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS , was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a...
proposed that a machine may need a human-like body to think and speak:
It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can
buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English. That process could follow the normal teaching of a
child. Things would be pointed out and named, etc. (Turing, 1950).
Embodiment theory was brought into Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
most notably by Rodney Brooks
Rodney Brooks
Rodney Allen Brooks is the former Panasonic professor of robotics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since 1986 he has authored a series of highly influential papers which have inaugurated a fundamental shift in artificial intelligence research...
in the 1980s. Brooks showed that robot
Robot
A robot is a mechanical or virtual intelligent agent that can perform tasks automatically or with guidance, typically by remote control. In practice a robot is usually an electro-mechanical machine that is guided by computer and electronic programming. Robots can be autonomous, semi-autonomous or...
s could be more effective if they 'thought' (planned or processed
Information processing
Information processing is the change of information in any manner detectable by an observer. As such, it is a process which describes everything which happens in the universe, from the falling of a rock to the printing of a text file from a digital computer system...
) and perceived
Perception
Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...
as little as possible. The robot's intelligence is geared towards only handling the minimal amount of information necessary to make its behavior
Behavior
Behavior or behaviour refers to the actions and mannerisms made by organisms, systems, or artificial entities in conjunction with its environment, which includes the other systems or organisms around as well as the physical environment...
be appropriate and/or as desired by its creator. Brooks (and others) have claimed that all autonomous agents
Intelligent agent
In artificial intelligence, an intelligent agent is an autonomous entity which observes through sensors and acts upon an environment using actuators and directs its activity towards achieving goals . Intelligent agents may also learn or use knowledge to achieve their goals...
need to be both embodied and situated
Situated
In artificial intelligence and cognitive science, the term situated refers to an agent which is embedded in an environment. The term situated is commonly used to refer to robots, but some researchers argue that software agents can also be situated if:...
. They claim that this is the only way to achieve strong AI
Strong AI
Strong AI is artificial intelligence that matches or exceeds human intelligence — the intelligence of a machine that can successfully perform any intellectual task that a human being can. It is a primary goal of artificial intelligence research and an important topic for science fiction writers and...
.
Neuroscience
One source of inspiration for embodiment theory has been research in cognitive neuroscienceCognitive neuroscience
Cognitive neuroscience is an academic field concerned with the scientific study of biological substrates underlying cognition, with a specific focus on the neural substrates of mental processes. It addresses the questions of how psychological/cognitive functions are produced by the brain...
, such as the proposals of Gerald Edelman
Gerald Edelman
Gerald Maurice Edelman is an American biologist who shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work with Rodney Robert Porter on the immune system. Edelman's Nobel Prize-winning research concerned discovery of the structure of antibody molecules...
concerning how mathematical and computational models such as neuronal group selection and neural degeneracy result in emergent categorization. Drawing on experimental psychology and linguistics as well as Edelman and other cognitive neuroscientists, Rohrer (2005) discusses how both our neural and developmental embodiment shape both our mental and linguistic categorizations. The degree of thought abstraction has been found to be associated with physical distance which then affects associated ideas and perception of risk.
This view is compatible with some views of cognition promoted in neuropsychology
Neuropsychology
Neuropsychology studies the structure and function of the brain related to specific psychological processes and behaviors. The term neuropsychology has been applied to lesion studies in humans and animals. It has also been applied to efforts to record electrical activity from individual cells in...
, such as the theories of consciousness of Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Vilayanur Subramanian "Rama" Ramachandran, born 1951, is a neuroscientist known for his work in the fields of behavioral neurology and visual psychophysics...
, Gerald Edelman
Gerald Edelman
Gerald Maurice Edelman is an American biologist who shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work with Rodney Robert Porter on the immune system. Edelman's Nobel Prize-winning research concerned discovery of the structure of antibody molecules...
, and Antonio Damasio
Antonio Damasio
Antonio Damasio is David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Southern California, where he heads USC's Brain and Creativity Institute and Adjunct Professor at the Salk Institute. Prior to taking up his posts at USC, in 2005, Damasio was M.W...
.
Criticisms of Embodied Cognition
Research on embodied cognition is extremely broad, covering a wide range of concepts. Methods to study embodied cognition vary from experiment to experiment based on the operational definitionOperational definition
An operational definition defines something in terms of the specific process or set of validation tests used to determine its presence and quantity. That is, one defines something in terms of the operations that count as measuring it. The term was coined by Percy Williams Bridgman and is a part of...
used by researchers. There is much evidence for embodied cognition, although interpretation of results and their significance may be disputed. Researchers continue to search for the best way to study and interpret embodied cognition.
Infants as Models of Embodied Cognition
Some criticize the notion that pre-verbal children provide an ideal channel for studying embodied cognition, especially embodied social cognitionSocial cognition
Social cognition is the encoding, storage, retrieval, and processing, in the brain, of information relating to conspecifics, or members of the same species. At one time social cognition referred specifically to an approach to social psychology in which these processes were studied according to the...
. It may be impossible to know when a pre-verbal infant is a "pure model" of embodied cognition, since infants experience dramatic changes in social behavior throughout development. A 9-month old has reached a different developmental stage than a 2-month old. Looking-time and reaching measures of embodied cognition may not represent embodied cognition since infants develop object permanence
Object permanence
Object permanence is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, heard, or touched. It is acquired by human infants between 8 and 12 months of age via the process of logical induction to help them develop secondary schemes in their sensori-motor coordination...
of objects they can see before they develop object permanence with objects they can touch. True embodied cognition suggests that children would have to first physically engage with an object to understand object permanence.
The response to this critique is that infants are "ideal models" of embodied cognition. Infants are the best models because they utilize symbols less than adults do. Looking-time could likely be a better measure of embodied cognition than reaching because infants have not developed certain fine motor skills yet. Infants may first develop a passive mode of embodied cognition before they develop the active mode involving fine motor movements.
Overdrawn Conclusions?
Some criticize the conclusions made by researchers about embodied cognition. The pencil-in-teeth study is frequently cited as an example of these invalidly drawn conclusions. The researchers believed that the quicker responses to positive sentences by participants engaging their smiling muscles represented embodied cognition. However, opponents argue that the effects of this exercise were primed or facilitated by the engagement of certain facial muscles. Many cases of facilitative movements of the body may be incorrectly labeled as evidence of embodied cognition.Six views of embodied cognition
The following “Six Views of Embodied Cognition” are due to Margaret Wilson:- Cognition is situated. Cognitive activity takes place in the context of a real-world environment, and inherently involves perception and action. One example of this is moving around a room while, at the same time, trying to decide where the furniture should go. Another example is day-dreaming. You are in a situation, but you’re not in the situation or 'present'. At the time you may be doing something, but your mind or your thoughts are in a much different place.
- Cognition is time-pressured. Cognition must be understood in terms of how it functions under the pressure of real-time interaction with the environment. When you’re under pressure to make a decision, the choice that is made emerges from the confluence of pressures that you’re under and in their absence, a decision may be made completely different. Since there was pressure, the result was the decision you made.
- We off-load cognitive work onto the environment. Because of limits on our information-processing abilities, we exploit the environment to reduce the cognitive workload. We make the environment hold or even manipulate information for us, and we harvest that information only on a need-to-know basis. This is seen when people have calendars, agendas, PDA’s, or anything to help them with everyday functions. We write things down so we can use it when we need it, instead of taking the time to memorize or encode it into our minds.
- The environment is part of the cognitive system. The information flow between mind and world is so dense and continuous that, for scientists studying the nature of cognitive activity, the mind alone is not a meaningful unit of analysis. This statement means that the production of cognitive activity does not come from mind alone, but rather is a mixture of the mind and the environmental situation that we are in. These interactions become part of our cognitive systems. Our thinking, decision making, and future are all impacted by our environmental situations.
- Cognition is for action. The function of the mind is to guide action and things such as perception and memory must be understood in terms of their contribution to situation-appropriate behavior. This claim has to do with the visual and memory perception that our minds have. Our vision is encoded into our minds as a “what” and “where” concept. Meaning the structure and placement of an object. This idea goes back to what we are used to and what we have been exposed to. Our perception of what we see comes from our experience and exposure of it. Memory in this case doesn’t necessarily mean memorizing something. Rather remembering in a relevant point of view instead of as it really is. We remember how relevant it is to us, and decide if it’s worth remembering.
- Off-line cognition is body-based. Even when decoupled from the environment, the activity of the mind is grounded in mechanisms that evolved for interaction with the environment- that is, mechanisms of sensory processing and motor control. This is shown with infants or toddlers best. Children utilize skills and abilities they were born with, such as sucking, grasping, and listening, to learn more about the environment. The skills are broken down into five main categories that combine sensory with motor skills, sensorimotor functions. The five main skills are:
- Mental Imagery- Is visualizing something based on your perception of it, when it is not there or is not present. An example of this would be having a race. You are all excited and full of adrenaline and you take a moment and you can actually see yourself winning the race.
- Working MemoryWorking memoryWorking memory has been defined as the system which actively holds information in the mind to do verbal and nonverbal tasks such as reasoning and comprehension, and to make it available for further information processing...
- Short term memory - Episodic MemoryEpisodic memoryEpisodic memory is the memory of autobiographical events that can be explicitly stated. Semantic and episodic memory together make up the category of declarative memory, which is one of the two major divisions in memory...
- Long term memory - Implicit Memory- means by which we learn certain skills until they become automatic for us. An example of this would be an adult brushing his/her teeth, or an expert race car driver putting the car in drive.
- Reasoning and Problem-Solving- Having a mental model of something will increase problem-solving approaches.
Criticism of the Six Claims
Some authors go so far as to complain that the phrase “situated cognition” implies falsely that there also exists cognition that is not situated (Greeno & Moore, 1993, p. 50). Of these, the first three and the fifth claim appear to be at least partially true, and their usefulness is best evaluated in terms of the range of their applicability. The sixth claim has received the least attention, but may be the most powerful of the six claims (Wilson M., 2002).Evolutionary Epistemology
Theorists whose theories of embodiment of cognition are more closely tied to Universal DarwinismUniversal darwinism
Universal Darwinism refers to a variety of approaches that extend the theory of Darwinism beyond its original domain of biological evolution on Earth...
are evolutionary epistemologists
Evolutionary epistemology
Evolutionary epistemology refers to two distinct topics - on the one hand, the biological evolution of cognitive mechanisms in animals and humans, and on the other hand, a theory in that knowledge itself evolves by natural selection....
such as Karl Popper
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics...
and Donald T. Campbell
Donald T. Campbell
Donald Thomas Campbell was an American social scientist. He is noted for his work in methodology. He coined the term "evolutionary epistemology" and developed a selectionist theory of human creativity.- Biography :...
. In their view it is the action and the form of the body which are the sources of the knowledge for any organism as long as it reflects the environment well enough for the organism to be able to survive in it and be competitive enough to reproduce at a sustainable rate in it. Blind variation and selective retention is the universal two-step mechanism which over the course of time enables knowledge to be formed filogenetically and ontogenetically, and simultaneously on different levels, both the hard-wired knowledge and the 'softer' ones.
See also
- EmbodimentEmbodimentEmbodied or embodiment may refer to:in psychology and philosophy,*Embodied cognition , a position in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind emphasizing the role that the body plays in shaping the mind...
- Cognitive linguisticsCognitive linguisticsIn linguistics, cognitive linguistics refers to the branch of linguistics that interprets language in terms of the concepts, sometimes universal, sometimes specific to a particular tongue, which underlie its forms...
- Cognitive neuropsychologyCognitive neuropsychologyCognitive neuropsychology is a branch of cognitive psychology that aims to understand how the structure and function of the brain relates to specific psychological processes. It places a particular emphasis on studying the cognitive effects of brain injury or neurological illness with a view to...
- Cognitive neuroscienceCognitive neuroscienceCognitive neuroscience is an academic field concerned with the scientific study of biological substrates underlying cognition, with a specific focus on the neural substrates of mental processes. It addresses the questions of how psychological/cognitive functions are produced by the brain...
- Cognitive scienceCognitive scienceCognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
- Conceptual blendingConceptual blendingConceptual Blending is a general theory of cognition. According to this theory, elements and vital relations from diverse scenarios are "blended" in a subconscious process known as Conceptual Blending, which is assumed to be ubiquitous to everyday thought and language...
- Conceptual metaphorConceptual metaphorIn cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor, or cognitive metaphor, refers to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain, in terms of another, for example, understanding quantity in terms of directionality . A conceptual domain can be any coherent organization of human experience...
- Embodied cognitive scienceEmbodied cognitive scienceEmbodied Cognitive Science is an interdisciplinary field of research, the aim of which is to explain the mechanisms underlying intelligent behavior...
- Embodied Embedded CognitionEmbodied Embedded CognitionEmbodied Embedded Cognition is a philosophical theoretical position in cognitive science, closely related to situated cognition, embodied cognition, embodied cognitive science and dynamical systems theory. The theory states that intelligent behaviour emerges out of the interplay between brain,...
- Embodied music cognitionEmbodied music cognitionEmbodied music cognition is a direction within systematic musicology interested in studying the role of the human body in relation to all musical activities....
- Enactivism
- Image schemaImage schemaAn image schema is a recurring structure within our cognitive processes which establishes patterns of understanding and reasoning. Image schemas are formed from our bodily interactions, from linguistic experience, and from historical context...
- Moravec's paradoxMoravec's paradoxMoravec's paradox is the discovery by artificial intelligence and robotics researchers that, contrary to traditional assumptions, high-level reasoning requires very little computation, but low-level sensorimotor skills require enormous computational resources. The principle was articulated by Hans...
- NeuropsychologyNeuropsychologyNeuropsychology studies the structure and function of the brain related to specific psychological processes and behaviors. The term neuropsychology has been applied to lesion studies in humans and animals. It has also been applied to efforts to record electrical activity from individual cells in...
- NeurophenomenologyNeurophenomenologyNeurophenomenology refers to a scientific research program aimed to address the hard problem of consciousness in a pragmatic way. It combines neuroscience with phenomenology in order to study experience, mind, and consciousness with an emphasis on the embodied condition of the human mind...
- Philosophy of mindPhilosophy of mindPhilosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...
- ExternalismExternalismExternalism is a group of positions in the philosophy of mind which hold that the mind is not only the result of what is going on inside the nervous system but also of what either occur or exist outside the subject. It is often contrasted with internalism which holds that the mind emerges out of...
- Situated cognitionSituated cognitionSituated cognition poses that knowing is inseparable from doing by arguing that all knowledge is situated in activity bound to social, cultural and physical contexts....
- Where Mathematics Comes FromWhere Mathematics Comes FromWhere Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being is a book by George Lakoff, a cognitive linguist, and Rafael E. Núñez, a psychologist...
External links
- The Situated Body, a special issue of Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology and the Arts. Guest edited by Shaun Gallagher.
- Six Views of Embodied Cognition
- Embodiment and Experientialism from the Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics (pdf)
- Embodied Cognition: A Field Guide (pdf) - from an Artificial IntelligenceArtificial intelligenceArtificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
perspective - Where the Action Is by Paul DourishPaul DourishPaul Dourish is a computer scientist best known for his work at the intersection of computer science and social science. He is a professor at the University of California, Irvine, where he joined the faculty in 2000.- Life and Work :...
- for applications to human-computer interaction. - Pragmatism, Ideology, and Embodiment: William James and the Philosophical Foundations of Embodiment by Tim Rohrer
- Visual Causality - an article on the embodied nature of causal perception
- Society for the Scientific Study of Embodiment
- Embodied Cognition - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- 2001 Summary of how the embodiment hypothesis of cognitive linguistics has begun to interact with theories of embodiment in fields ranging from cognitive anthropology to cognitive neuroscience
- Goddard College's Embodiment Studies Web Resources
- Goddard College's Individualized MA program where students may focus in Embodiment Studies
- Society for the Scientific Study of Embodiment
- Embodiment Resources - for those researching into embodiment, particularly as it relates to phenomenology, sociology and cognitive neuroscience.
- The Embodiment Wiki