Embodied cognition

Embodied cognition
Details
Theory of	Cognition
Key concepts	Body Mind Environment Affordance Sensorimotor functions
Origin	20th century
Cognitive features	Concepts Categories Perception Language Memory Learning Reasoning Emotion Self-regulation Social cognition Sensorimotor contingencies
Bodily aspects	Motor system Perceptual system situatedness Intrinsic assumptions
General
Related fields	Cognitive science Cognitive psychology Cognitive neuroscience Situated cognition Philosophy Linguistics AI Robotics
Terminology on cognition

Embodied cognition is the theory that many features of cognition, whether human or otherwise, are shaped by aspects of the entire body of the organism. The features of cognition include high level mental constructs (such as concepts and categories) and performance on various cognitive tasks (such as reasoning or judgment). The aspects of the body include the motor system, the perceptual system, bodily interactions with the environment (situatedness), and the assumptions about the world that are built into the structure of the organism.

The embodied mind thesis challenges other theories, such as cognitivism, computationalism, and Cartesian dualism. It is closely related to the extended mind thesis, situated cognition, and enactivism. The modern version depends on insights drawn from recent research in psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, dynamical systems, artificial intelligence, robotics, animal cognition, plant cognition and neurobiology.

Embodiment thesis

An illustration of the classical cartesian model of the mind under which body, world, perception and action are understood as independent.

Proponents of the embodied cognition thesis emphasize the active and significant role the body plays in the shaping of cognition and in the understanding of an agent's mind and cognitive capacities. In philosophy, embodied cognition holds that an agent's cognition, rather than being the product of mere (innate) abstract representations of the world, is strongly influenced by aspects of an agent's body beyond the brain itself. An embodied model of cognition oposes the disembodided cartesian model according to which all mental phenomena are non-physical and, threfore, not influenced by the body. Thus, the embodiment thesis intends to reintroduce an agent's bodily experiences into any account of cognition. It is a rather broad thesis and encompasses both weak and strong variants of embodiment. In their attempt to reconcile cognitive science with human experience, Varela et al.'s enactive approach to cognition defines "embodiment" as follows:

"By using the term embodied we mean to highlight two points: first that cognition depends upon the kinds of experience that come from having a body with various sensorimotor capacities, and second, that these individual sensorimotor capacities are themselves embedded in a more encompassing biological, psychological and cultural context."

— Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, Eleanor Rosch : The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience pages 172–173.

This double sense that Varela et al. attribute to the thesis of embodiment emphasizes the many aspects of cognition that researchers in different fields —such as philosophy, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, psychology, and neuroscience— are involved with. This general characterization of embodiment faces some difficulties: a consequence of this emphasis on the body, experience, culture, context, and the cognitive mechanisms of an agent in the world is that often distinct views and approaches to embodied cognition overlap. Indeed, for example, the theses of extended cognition and situated cognition are usually intertwined and not always carefully separated. Similarly, since each of these aspects of the embodiment thesis is endorsed to different degrees, embodied cognition should be better seen as a research program rather than an unified well-defined theory.

Some authors explain the embodiment thesis by arguing that cognition depends on an agent's body and its interactions with a determined environment. Accordingly, cognition in real biological systems is not an end in itself but is constrained by the system's goals and capacities. However, they argue, such constraints do not mean cognition is set by adaptive behavior (or autopoiesis) alone, but rather that cognition requires "some kind of information processing... the transformation or communication of incoming information". The acquiring of such information involves the agent's "exploration and modification of the environment".

"It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that cognition consists simply of building maximally accurate representations of input information...the gaining of knowledge is a stepping stone to achieving the more immediate goal of guiding behavior in response to the system's changing surroundings."

— Marcin Miłkowski: Explaining the Computational Mind, p. 4.

An illustration of the embodied cognitive model of the mind under which body, world, perception and action are dynamically related with each other.

Another approach to understand embodied cognition comes from a narrower characterization of the embodiment thesis. The following narrower view on embodiment not only avoids any compromises to external sources other than the body, but also allows differentiating between embodied cognition, extended cognition, and situated cognition. Thus, we can specify the embodiment thesis as follows:

Embodiment thesis: Many features of cognition are embodied in that they are deeply dependent upon characteristics of the physical body of an agent, such that the agent's beyond-the-brain body plays a significant causal role, or a physically constitutive role, in that agent's cognitive processing.

—RA Wilson and L Foglia, Embodied Cognition in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

This thesis points out the core idea that an agent's body plays a significant role in shaping different features of cognition such as perception, attention, memory, reasoning among others. Accordingly, these features of cognition depend on the kind of body an agent has. Furthermore, the thesis omits direct mention of some aspects of the "more encompassing biological, psychological and cultural context" included by Varela et al. and, therefore, makes possible to separate embodied cognition, extended cognition, and situated cognition.

The Extended mind thesis, in contrast to the Embodiment thesis, limits cognitive processing neither to the brain nor even to the body, but extends it outward into the agent's world. Situated cognition emphasizes that this extension is not just a matter of including resources outside the head, but stresses the role of probing and modifying interaction with the agent's world. Cognition is situated in that it is inherently dependent upon the cultural and social contexts within which it takes place.

This conceptual reframing of cognition as an activity influenced by the body has had significant implications. For instance, the view of cognition inherited by most of contemporary cognitive neuroscience is internalist in nature. An agent's behaviour along with his capacity to maintain (accurate) representations of the surrounding environment were considered as the product of "powerful brains that can maintain the world models and devise plans". From this perspective, cognizing was conceived as something that an isolated brain did. In contrast, accepting the role the body plays during cognitive processes allows us to account for a more encompassing view of cognition. This shift in perspective within neuroscience suggests that successful behaviour in real–world scenarios demands the integration of several sensorimotor and cognitive (as well as affective) capacities of an agent. Thus, it is in the relationship between an agent and the affordances provided by the environment, rather than in the brain alone, where cognition emerges.

Recently, a collection of positive characterizations regarding what the embodiment thesis entails for cognition have also been offered. Margaret Wilson (2002) argues that the general outlook of embodied cognition displays an interesting co-variation of multiple observations and houses a number of different claims: (1) cognition is situated; (2) cognition is time-pressured; (3) we off-load cognitive work onto the environment; (4) the environment is part of the cognitive system; (5) cognition is for action; (6) offline cognition is body based. According to Wilson, the first three and the fifth claim appear to be at least partially true, while the fourth claim is deeply problematic in that all things that have an impact on the elements of a system are not necessarily considered part of the system. The sixth claim, although it has received the least attention in the literature on embodied cognition, it may be the most powerful of the six claims as it shows how certain human cognitive capabilities, that previously were thought to be highly abstract, now appear to be leaning towards an embodied approach for their explanation. Indeed, Wilson points out at least five main (abstract) categories that combine both sensory and motor skills (or sensorimotor functions). The first three are working memory, episodic memory, and implicit memory; the fourth is mental imagery, and finally, the fifth concerns reasoning and problem—solving.

History

A timeline graph reconstructing historically relevant developments and key contributions that influenced the growth of embodied cognition. To the left we have the years in descending order. The legend on the top-right corner indicates how to interpret the connections made.

The theory of embodied cognition, along with the multiple aspects it comprises, can be regarded as the imminent result of an intellectual skepticism towards the flourishment of the disembodied theory of mind put forth by René Descartes in the 17th century. According to Cartesian dualism, the mind is entirely distinct from the body and can be successfully explained and understood without reference to the body or to its processes.

Research has been done to identify the set of ideas that would establish what could be considered as the early stages of embodied cognition around inquiries regarding the mind-body-soul relation and vitalism in the German tradition from 1740 to 1920. However, embodied cognition, as it is conceived nowadays, has a relatively short history. We can trace back the intellectual underpinnings of embodied cognition to the influence of philosophy, and more specifically, the phenomenological tradition, psychology, and connectionism in the 20th century.

Phenomenologists such as Edmund Husserl (1850–1938), Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1962) were a great source of inspiration for what would later be known as the embodiment thesis. They stood up against the mechanistic and disembodied approach to the explanation of the mind by emphasizing the fact that there are aspects of our human experiences (consciousness, cognition) that cannot simply be explained by a model of the mind as computation of inner symbols. From a phenomenological standpoint, such aspects remain unaccountable if we deny the fact—as dualism does—that they "are deeply rooted in the physical nuts-and-bolts of the interacting agent". Maurice Merleau-Ponty in his "Phenomenology of Perception" (French: Phénoménologie de la perception), for example, rejects the cartesian idea that our primary mode of being in the world is "thinking" (English: I think, therefore I am, Latin: cogito ergo sum) and proposes corporeity (French: corporéité), that is, the body itself as the primary site for knowing the world, and perception as the medium and the pre-reflective foundation of experience.

"The body is the vehicle of being in the world, and having a body is, for a living creature, to be intervolved in a definite environment, to identify oneself with certain projects and be continually committed to them."

So stated, the body is the primary condition for experience, it "is my point of view upon the world" which opens up multiple possibilities for being, it "is a knot of living significations".

The appreciation of the phenomenological mindset allows us to not overlook the influence that phenomenology's speculative but systematic reflection on the mind-body-world relation had in the growth and development of the core ideas which embodied cognition comprises. From a phenomenological perspective "all cognition is embodied, interactive, and embedded in dynamically changing environments". These constitute the set of beliefs which proponents of embodied cognition such as Francisco Varela, Eleonor Rosch, and Evan Thompson will revise later on and seek to reintroduce in the scientific study of cognition under the name of enaction. Enactivism reclaims the importance of considering the biodynamics of the living organism to understand cognition by gathering ideas from fields such as biology, psychoanalysis, Buddhism, and phenomenology. According to this enactive approach, organisms obtain knowledge or develop their cognitive capacities through perception–action interactions with a determined environment.

This basic idea of (qualitative) experience as the product of an individual's active perception–action interactions with its surrounding is also traceable to the American contextualist or pragmatist tradition, notably John Dewey in such works as Art As Experience. For Dewey, experiences affect our personal lives as they are the bi-product of continuous and commutative interactions of a biological and organic self (an incarnated body) with the world, and thus, these lived (corporeal) experiences should serve as the foundation to build upon.

On the bases of empirical grounds, and in opposition to those philosophical traditions that denied the importance of the body to understand cognition, research on embodiment have demonstrated the relationship between cognition and bodily process. Thus, understanding cognition requires to consider and investigate the sensory and motor mechanism that enables it. George Lakoff, for example, holds that reasoning and language, arise from the nature of our bodily experiences and, thus, even our own metaphors have bodily references.

Since the 1950s, encouraged by progress in informatics, researchers began to create digital models of the processes by which sensory input is selected by the brain, stored in the memory, connected to existing knowledge and used for elaboration. These traditional computationalists views of cognition that were typical in the 1950s–1980s are now considered implausible because there is no continuity with the cognitive skills that would have been demanded and developed by the ancestors of the human species. Some researchers argue that this algorithmic focus on mental activities ignores the fact that human beings engage with evolutionary pressures using their entire bodies. According to Margaret Wilson (2008) the embodied cognition perspective is fundamentally an evolutionary one, viewing cognition as a set of abilities that built upon, and still reflects, the structure of our physical bodies and how our brains evolved to manage those bodies. The theory of evolution emphasises that thanks to their bipedal gait, early humans did not need their 'forepaws' for locomotion, facilitating them to manipulate the environment with the aids of tools. One researcher goes even further, positing that the multiple opportunities provided by our hands shape our concepts of the mind. One example is that we often conceive cognitive processes in manual terms, such as 'grasping an idea'.

J.J. Gibson (1904–1979) developed his theory on ecological psychology that entirely contradicted the computationalist idea of understanding the mind as information processing which by that time had permeated psychology—both in theory and practice. Gibson particularly disagreed with the way his contemporaries understood the nature of perception. While computationalism considers perceptual objects as an unreliable sources of information upon which the mind must do some sort of inference, Gibson considers perceptual processes as the product of the relation between a moving agent and its relationship with a specific environment. Similarly, Varela and colleague's argue that both cognition and the environment are not pre-given; instead, they are enacted or brought forth by the agent's history of sensorimotor and structurally coupled activities.

Connectionism also put forth a critique to the computationalist commitments yet granting the possibility of some sort of non-symbolic computational processes to take place. According to the connectionist thesis, cognition as a biological phenomenon can be explained and understood through the interaction and dynamics of artificial neural networks (ANNs). However, given the traces of abstraction that remain in the inputs and outputs through which connectionist neural networks carry its computations, connectionism is said to be not so far from computationalism and unable to cope with both the challenge of dealing with the details involved during perceiving and acting and explaining higher level cognition. Likewise, although connectionism's take on cognition is biologically inspired by the behavior and interaction of single neurons, its connections to the embodiment thesis in general, and to perception–action interactions in particular, are not clearly outlined or straightforward.

More recently, O'Regan, J. K. and Noë, A. provide empirical evidence against the computationalist mindset arguing that although cortical maps exist in the brain and their patterns of activation give rise to perceptual experiences, this does not fully explain their subjective character. Namely, it is unclear how internal representations generate conscious perception. Given this ambiguity, O'Regan, J. K. and Nöe, A. put forth what will be known as "sensorimotor contingencies" (SMCs) in an attempt to understand the changing character of sensations as we act in the world. According to the SMC theory,

"The experience of seeing occurs when the organism masters what we call the governing laws of sensorimotor contingency."

Ever since the late 20th century and recognizing the significant role the body plays for cognition, the embodied cognition theory has gained (an ever increasing) popularity, it has been the subject of multiple articles in different research areas, and the mainstream approach to what Shapiro and Spaulding call the "embodied make-over". A consequence of this widespread acceptance of the embodiment thesis is the emergence of 4E features of cognition (embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended cognition). Under 4E, cognition is no longer thought of as being instantiated in or by a single organism but rather:

"It assumes that cognition is shaped and structured by dynamic interactions between the brain, body, and both the physical and social environments".

The scope of embodied cognition

A diagram showing the scope of embodied cognition and the intertwined relationship that arise between the sciences.

Embodied cognition argues that several factors both internal and external (such as the body and the environment) play a role in the development of an agent's cognitive capacities, just as mental constructs (such as thoughts and desires) are said to influence an agent's bodily actions. For this reason, embodied cognition is considered as a wide-ranging research program, rather than a well-defined and unified theory. A scientific approach to embodied cognition reaches, inspires, and brings together ideas from several research areas, each with its own take on embodiment yet in a joint effort to (methodically) investigate embodied cognition.

Research on embodied cognition comprises a variety of fields within the sciences such as linguistics, neuroscience, (cognitive) psychology, philosophy, artificial intelligence, and robotics, etc. For this reason, recent developments on embodied cognition can be regarded as the embodied make-over of cognitive science offering new ways to look at the nature, structure, and mechanisms of cognition. Furthermore, embodying cognition requires the different features of cognition such as perception, language, memory, learning, reasoning, emotion, self-regulation, and its social aspects to be revisited and investigated through lens of embodiment in order to ground its theoretical and methodological underpinnings.

Embodied cognition has gained the attention and interest of classical cognitive science (along with all sciences it comprises) to incorporate embodiment ideas into its research. In linguistics, George Lakoff (a cognitive scientist and linguist) and his collaborators Mark Johnson, Mark Turner, and Rafael E. Núñez) have written a series of books promoting and expanding the embodiment thesis based on developments within the field of cognitive science. Researchers suggest evidence suggesting that people use their understanding of familiar physical objects, actions, and situations to understand other domains. Lakoff argues that all cognition is based on the knowledge that comes from the body and that other disciplines are mapped onto our embodied knowledge using a combination of conceptual metaphor, image schema and prototypes.

Lakoff and Johnson, in the first approach focusing on conceptual metaphors, claim that people use metaphors all over. And people use these metaphors to be in charge of the conceptual level; in other words, they map one conceptual state into another one. Therefore, they claim that there is a single metaphor behind various definitions. Lakoff et al. collected different examples of conceptual metaphors from different fields to explain conceptual metaphors and presented them. The most common example given to this explanation is when the people describe the concept of love, associating this love metaphor with physically embodied journey experiences. Another example of the language and embodiment of Lakoff and Mark Turner is visual metaphors. Accordingly, they argue that the positioning of these visual metaphors for upright and forward-moving creatures depends on body type and the characteristics of the body's interaction with the environment.

In another approach, Lakoff and Nuñez (2000) focused on how people understand abstract concepts. They call this approach "image schema". Accordingly, abstract concepts are understood by considering basic physical situations. Abstract concepts, whose basic physical states are considered, then interpreted by using sensory-motor and perceptual skills. Thus, it is shown that there is a spatial reasoning process that requires using the body even in reasoning over abstract concepts. In this context, the image schema is seen as a conceptual metaphor form. For example, spatial reasoning skills and the visual cortex tend to be used to understand a mathematical concept consisting of imaginary numbers that are purely abstract. Thus, it has been shown how important the body plays in the image schema as in the conceptual metaphor in the interpretation of concepts.

Another important factor in understanding linguistic categories is prototypes. Eleanor Rosch (1973) argued that prototypes play an important role in people's cognition. According to her research, prototypes are the most typical members of a category, and she explains this with an example from birds. The robin, for example, is a prototypical bird while the penguin is not a prototypical bird which shows that objects that are prototypical are more easily categorized, and therefore, people can find answers by reasoning about the categories they encounter through these prototypes. In another study, Eleanor Rosch (1978) identified basic level categories that exemplify this situation in a more structured way. Accordingly, basic level categories are categories that can be associated with basic physical motions and are made up of prototypes that can be easily visualized. Furthermore, basic–level category prototypes are used to reason about general categories. On the other hand, Lakoff emphasizes that what is important in prototype theory, rather than class or type characteristics, is that the feature of the categories people use is a bodily experience. Thus, as seen in the general of these approaches, it can be said that the most basic feature in understanding and interpreting linguistic concepts and categories is whether the concept or category has been experienced bodily.

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. 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. In related work at Haskins, Paul Mermelstein, Philip Rubin, Louis Goldstein, and colleagues developed articulatory synthesis tools for computationally modeling the physiology and aeroacoustics of the vocal tract, demonstrating how cognition and perception of speech can be shaped by biological constraints. This was extended into the audio-visual domain by the "talking heads" approach of Eric Vatikiotis-Bateson, Rubin, and other colleagues.

The concept of the embodiment has been inspired by research in cognitive neuroscience, 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. From a neuroscientific perspective, the embodied cognition theory examines the interaction of sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective neurological systems. The embodied mind thesis 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. Furthermore, the embodiment thesis is supported by a broad and ever-increasing collection of empirical studies within neuroscience. By examining brain activity with neuroimaging techniques, researchers have found indications of embodiment. In an Electroencephalography (EEG) study researchers showed that in line with the embodied cognition, sensorimotor contingency and common coding theses, sensory and motor processes in the brain are not sequentially separated but are strongly coupled. Considering the interaction of the sensorimotor and cognitive system, Rohrer (2005) stresses how crucial sensorimotor cortices are for semantic comprehension of body–action terms and sentences. A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study by Hauk et al. (2004) showed that passively read action words, such as lick, pick or kick, led to a somatotopic neuronal activity in or adjacent to brain regions associated with actual movement of the respective body parts. Using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), Buccino et al. (2005) revealed that the activity of the motor system is coupled to auditory action-related sentences. When the participants listened to hand–or foot-related sentences, the motor evoked potentials (MEPs) recorded from the hand and foot muscles were reduced. These two exemplary studies indicate a relationship between cognitively understanding words referring to sensorimotor concepts and activation of sensorimotor cortices. Along the lines of embodiment, neuroimaging techniques serve to show interactions of the sensory and motor system.

Next to neuroimaging studies, behavioral studies also point towards the embodied cognition theory. Abstract higher cognitive concepts such as the "importance" of an object or an issue also seem to stand in relation to the sensorimotor system. People estimate objects to be heavier when they are told that they are important or hold important information in contrast to unimportant information. Similarly, weight affects the way people invest physical and cognitive effort when dealing with concrete or abstract issues. For example, more importance is assigned to decision–making procedures when holding heavier clipboards. What this suggest is that the physical effort invested in concrete objects leads to more cognitive effort when dealing with abstract concepts.

The modeling work of cognitive neuroscientists such as Francisco Varela and Walter Freeman seeks to explain embodied and situated cognition in terms of dynamical systems theory and neurophenomenology, but rejects the idea that the brain uses representations to do so (a position also espoused by Gerhard Werner). Currently, there are several neuroscientific approaches to explain cognition from an embodied perspective. Furthermore, there are multiple methods such as neuroimaging techniques, behavioral experiments, and dynamical models that can be employed to support and further investigate embodied cognition.

In the field of 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 Hendriks-Jansen.

In the light of these, a body is essential for cognition and, therefore, for intelligent behavior since the interaction between the body and the environment is fundamental for developing cognitive abilities. This type of knowledge is grounded in our physical embodiment; the relationship humans have with their bodies. It is the concept of "the idea that the mind is not only connected to the body but that the body influences the mind". Embodied artificial intelligence and robotics is a method of applying this principle to artificial systems.

This diagram shows the applications of embodied cognition and artificial intelligence.

Traditional artificial intelligence involves a computational approach. This primary computational paradigm evolved to the embodied perspective with embodied cognition studies and brought more interdisciplinary research topics to artificial intelligence. Embodied perspective brings a necessity of working with the physical world and systems which came alongside robotics. Robotics are essential for the embodied artificial perspective because computers and robots are different, according to Iida et al.(2004), while computers define the inputs, robots can interact with the physical world via their own body. Researchers working on embodied AI is moving away from an algorithm-driven approach to the robots to interact with the physical world. Embodied Artificial intelligence tries to figure out how biological systems work first, then construct basic rules of intelligent behavior, and finally apply that knowledge to create artificial systems, robots, or intelligent devices. Embodied artificial intelligence has a large scale of applications and research. For instance, we see the embodied artificial approach in micro-and nano-mechatronic systems and evolvable hardware, top-down bio-synthetic systems research, bottom-up chemo-synthetic systems, and biochemical systems. The majority of embodied artificial intelligence focuses on robot training and autonomous vehicles technologies. Autonomous vehicles have a significant interest in embodied artificial intelligence applications because this technology allows driving and making possible judgments based on what they see as humans do.

These applications demonstrate that embodied cognition brought a broader perspective to artificial intelligence and robotics. Without question, the applications of embodied artificial intelligence keep evolving with the help of twenty-first-century technology.

Perception

An illustration of an image that can be used to investigate the "change blindness" illusion which contains a changing object most people struggle to find right away. It emphasizes the fact that perception is active and demands our attention.

It is widely acknowledged that when an internal representation of the outside world is activated somewhere in the brain, it leads to a perceptual experience. Embodied cognition challenges this claim by stating that although cortical maps do exist, they themselves cannot explain our subjective experience of perception. For example, they cannot sufficiently explain the apparent stability of the visual world despite eye movements, the filling-in of the blind spot, the "change blindness", and other such visual illusions that unveil the (seemingly) imperfections of the visual system. From an embodied cognition perspective, perception is not a passive reception of (incomplete) sensory inputs for which the brain must compensate to provide us with a coherent picture. The brain interprets the outside world based on an individual's intentions, memories, and emotions, as well as the environment and the specific situation the individual is in. Furthermore, perception does not simply consist in receiving inputs (or visual stimuli) from the external world to output actions in response to them. Perception is an active process conducted by a perceiving agent (a perceiver), it entails an engaged perceiver and is influenced by the agent's experiences and intentions, his bodily states, and the interaction between the agent's body and the environment around it.

One example of such active interaction between perception and the body is the case that distance perception can be influenced by bodily states. The way we view the outside world can differ depending on the physical resources that individuals have such as fitness, age, or glucose levels. For instance, in one study, people with chronic pain who are less capable of moving around perceived given distances as further than healthy people did. Another study shows that intended actions can affect processing in visual search, with more orientation errors for pointing than for grasping. Because orientation is important when grasping an object, the plan to grasp an object is thought to improve orientation accuracy. This shows how actions, the body's interaction with the environment, can contribute to the visual processing of task-relevant information.

Perception also influences the perspective individuals to take on a particular situation and the type of judgments they make. For instance, researchers have shown that people will significantly more likely take the perspective of another person (e.g., a person in a picture) instead of their own when making judgements about objects in a photograph. This means that the presence of people (as compared to only objects) in a visual scene affects the perspective a viewer takes when making judgements on, for example, relations between objects in the scene. Interestingly, researchers claim that these results suggest a "disembodied" cognition given the fact that people take the perspective of others instead of their own and make judgments accordingly.

Language

See also: Embodied language processing

Embodied cognition views on language claim that when we comprehend words, sensorimotor areas are involved in interacting with the objects and entities the words refer to. In past years, behavioral and neural evidence has shown that the process of language comprehension activates a motor simulation and involves motor systems. Some researchers have investigated mirror neurons to illustrate the link between the mirror neuron systems and language suggesting that some aspects of language (such as part of semantics and phonology) can be embodied in the sensorimotor system represented by mirror neurons.

Language has a multi-component structure. One of these structures is language comprehension. Glenberg & Kaschak's (2002) research on embodied cognition shows that language comprehension involves the motor system. In addition, various studies explain that understanding linguistic explanations of actions is based on a simulation of the action described. These action simulations also include evaluation of the motor system. Olmstead et al. (2009)conducted a study in which university students have evaluated language comprehension and motor system with a pendulum swinging task while performing the "sentence judgment task.". They found significant changes in functions containing performable sentences.

Another study used the mirror neurons perspective to illustrate the relationship between the motor system and various language components. Because mirror neurons are one of the essential parts of the motor system, Fogassi and Ferrari (2007) compared monkeys and humans in an anatomical framework; specifically, they have made the comparison in Broca areas. In a study concerning the role of mirror neurons during learning via language usage, Rizzolatti and Craighero, noted that activations occurred in the Broca area even when participants watched other people's conversations without hearing the sounds. An fMRI study examining the relationship of mirror neurons in humans with linguistic materials has shown that there are activations in the premotor cortex and Broca's area when both reading or listening to sentences associated with actions. According to this findings, researchers claim that there is a connection between the motor system and language. Furthermore, they argue that motor systems and mirror neuron mechanisms can process certain aspects of language.

The current literature mainly focused on language and embodied cognition on a motor system, precisely mirror neuron explanations. With that, we see that this relationship extends the cognition capabilities with a variety of language components. For instance, Atkinson (2010) examined how embodied cognition and second language acquisition can extend cognitive ability. The nature of language acquisition extends cognitive capability itself due to the fact of having multiple components. Furthermore, all those components have embodied representation. Therefore, we can say that embodied cognition provides a ground concept for language. There is an increasing interest in investigating the relationship between embodied cognition and language in the current research.

Memory

The body has an essential role in shaping the mind. So, the mind must be understood in the context of its relationship with a physical body that interacts in the world. These interactions can also be cognitive activities in everyday life, such as driving, chatting, imagining the placement of items in a room. However, these cognitive activities are limited by memory capacity. The relationships between memory and embodied cognition have been demonstrated in studies in different fields and through various tasks. In general, studies on embodied cognition and memory investigate how manipulations on the body cause changes in memory performance, or vice versa, manipulations through memory tasks subsequently lead to bodily changes. In one study, Glenberg drew attention to the relationship between memory and action in his embodied cognition approach. In particular, he defines memory as integrated patterns of action limited by the body. Embodied cognition sees action preparation as a fundamental function of cognition. Memory plays a role in tasks that do not occur in the present but involve remembering actions and information from the past and imagining events that may or may not happen in the future. Also, he states that there is a reciprocal relationship between memory, action, and perception. That is, manipulations that can take place in the body or movement can lead to various changes in memory.

In another study, Dijkstra et al. investigated the influence of body position on ease of recall in an autobiographical memory study to examine the effect of embodied cognition on memory performance. In the study, participants were asked to take positions compatible or incompatible with their original body position of the remembered event during a recall event. Participants given compatible body positions compared to incompatible body positions showed faster responses in recalling memories during the experiment. Thus, researchers conclude that body position facilitates access to autobiographical memories. In another research that emphasized the relationship between memory and body, Wilson explains that memory systems depend on the body's experiences with the world. This is particularly evident in episodic memory because episodic memories in the episodic memory system are defined by their content and are remembered as experienced by the one who does the remembering. Another study focused on recalling personal memories and embodied memory, Culbertson, evaluated embodied memory through the recalling of personal traumas and violent memories and reported that people who have experienced trauma or violence re-feel their experiences in their narratives throughout their lives. In addition, he emphasizes that memories that threaten a person's life by directly affecting the body, such as injury and physical violence, create similar reactions again in the body while remembering the event. Similarly, Culbertson stated that he felt smells, sounds, and movements in some of the remembered memories from his childhood trauma memories. Then he proceeded to evaluate those memories and the corresponding physical and physiological phenomena associated with them through his childhood memories. In the end, Culbertson pointed out that the set of memories to be recalled and brought back to memory are embodied.

Wilson introduced new perspectives on the neural structure and memory processes underlying embodied cognition, episodic memory, recall, and recognition. As experiences are received, neural states are reenacted in action, perception, and introspection systems. Perception includes sensory modalities, motor modalities include movement, and introspection includes emotional, mental, and motivational states. All of these modalities altogether constitute different aspects that shape our experiences. Therefore, cognitive processes applied to memory support the action that is appropriate for a particular situation, not by remembering what the situation is, but by remembering the relationship of the action to that situation. For example, Bietti argues that remembering and identifying the party one attended the previous day is related to the body because the sensory-motor aspects of the event that is being recalled (i.e., the party), along with the details of what happened, are being reconstructed.

Learning

Embodied cognition can give us an explanation about the process through which infants attain spatial knowledge and understanding. Most infants learn to walk in the first 18 months of life, which draw on ample new opportunities for exploring things around them. For example, they may learn the affordance of "transportability" when they start exploring and carrying objects from place to place. Thereafter, new phases in exploration may occur, and through these phases, children can discover other even more elaborate affordances. According to Eleanor Gibson's theory, exploration itself takes an essential place in cognitive development. For example, infants explore whatever is in their vicinity by seeing, mouthing, or touching it before learning to reach objects nearby. Then, infants learn to crawl, which enables them to seek out objects beyond reaching distance, but also to learn about basic spatial relations between themselves, objects, and others including a basic understanding of depth and distance. Hence, through exploration, infants get to know the nature of the physical and social world around them. Achievement of motor skills seem to play a central role as to visual-spatial cognition.

Another example of embodied learning and social cognition in infants is shown in the works of Woodward and colleagues. In one experiment, 3-month-old infants who are not skilled in reaching were trained to reach for objects with velcro-covered mittens instead. Afterward, the assessments and comparison with the control group showed that the experimental group was more likely to view others' actions as goal-directed. Further research has shown that mere observational experience on the part of the infants does not produce these results.

Aspects of embodiment are also relevant for language learning and acquisition. For instance, the action-based language theory (ABL) proposes that the brain exploits the same mechanisms used in motor control for language learning. When adults call attention to an object and an infant follows the lead and attends to said object, canonical neurons are activated and affordances of an object become available to the infant. Simultaneously, hearing the articulation of the name of the object leads to the activation of speech mirror mechanisms in infants. This chain of events allows for Hebbian learning of the meaning of verbal labels by linking together both the speech controller and action controller which get activated in the scenario described above.

The role of gestures in learning is another example of the importance of embodiment for cognition. In a study using the Tower of Hanoi (TOH) puzzle, participants were divided into two groups. In the first part of the experiment, the smallest disks used in TOH were the lightest and could be moved using just one hand. For the second part, this was reversed for one group (switch group) so that the smallest disks were the heaviest, and participants needed both hands to move them. The disks remained the same for the other group ( no-switch group). After the experiment ended, participants were asked to explain their solution while researchers monitored their use of gestures when describing their solution. The results showed that using gestures affected the performance of the switch group in the second part of the experiment. The more they used one-handed gestures to depict their solution in the first part of the experiment, the worse they performed in the second part of it.

One study investigated the role of gestures in second language learning. The results showed that learning second language vocabulary with self-performed gestures increases learning outcomes. The benefits of learning with gestures continued even after 2 months and 6 months post-learning. This study also investigated the neural correlates of learning a second language with gestures. Left premotor areas and superior temporal sulcus ( a region that is responsible for visual processing of biological motion) were activated during learning with gestures. These findings are indicative of the strong role of embodied cognition in language learning.

Another study using fMRI showed that children who learned to solve mathematical problems using a speech and gesture strategy were more likely to have activation in motor regions of the brain. Importantly, the activation of motor regions occurred during scans in which children were not using gestures to solve the problems. This indicates that learning with the help of gestures, creates a neural trace of the motor system that goes beyond the learning phase and activates when children engage with problems they learned to solve with gestures.

Embodied cognition is linked to both reading and writing. It has been shown that physical and perceptual engagements which are congruent with the content of the reading material can boost reading comprehension. It has also been suggested that the benefits accrued from handwriting as compared to typing in letter recognition and written communication are the result of the more embodied nature of this mode of writing.

Energy Theater: A learning activity for energy dynamics that relies on embodied cognition.

These findings have been translated into an overhaul of educational and teaching practices in favour of embodied learning and teaching methods. For example, Energy Theatre is a method of teaching about energy dynamics based on the theory of embodied interaction. In this method, participants each play the role of a unit of energy and together they enact the transformation and transfer of energy in specific scenarios. 

The Human Orrery is another embodied method of education in which students learn about the solar system through enactment. In this method, the position of the planets is marked by disks and the participants enact the role of the planets by moving on their orbits.

The Mathematics Imagery Trainer for Proportion. A tool to help students learn proportion.

For mathematical education, Abrahamson classifies the embodied design for educational purposes into two genres of perception-based and action-based designs. In perception-based designs, the target is a/b concepts such as likelihood, slope, and proportional equivalence in geometrical similitude. The first step in this design is asking students to use their naive worldview to judge a set of material presented to them by their teacher which affirms their naive worldview. In the next step, teachers provide students with appropriate media and attempt to guide them to build models by following the formal procedure. In action-based designs, learners are presented with sensorimotor problems. Abrahamson and colleagues developed a platform called "Mathematical Imagery Trainer" to explore this design. In one particular version of MIT which was designed to teach proportion to learners, they were to move two cursors with both of their hands to turn a screen green. The screen would only turn green when the height of right and left hands from the base had a particular ratio. Once the learners discover the strategy to solve this problem, first the grid and then numerals are added to the screen so that the learners shift from qualitative to a quantitative understanding of the concept at hand.

Overall, embodied cognition has served as a new framework for exploring the learning process and developing new educational practices. The older methods of education are slowly being replaced or complemented by the new approaches inspired by embodied cognition theory.

Reasoning

Bodily action and (sensory) motor experiences are linked to various aspects of reasoning. For instance, a series of experiments demonstrated the interrelation between motor experience and high-level reasoning. In one of these studies it was illustrated that although most individuals recruit visual processes when presented with spatial problems such as mental rotation tasks motor experts favor motor processes to perform the same tasks, with higher overall performance. A related study showed that motor experts use similar processes for the mental rotation of body parts and polygons, whereas non-experts treated these stimuli differently. These results were not due to underlying confounds, as demonstrated by a training study which showed mental rotation improvements after a one-year motor training, compared with controls. Similar patterns were also found in working memory tasks, with the ability to remember movements being greatly disrupted by a secondary verbal task in controls and by a motor task in motor experts, suggesting the involvement of different processes to store movements depending on motor experience, namely verbal for controls and motor for experts.

Demonstration of dynamic depictive gestures for the Triangle conjecture

The role of motor experience in reasoning has been also investigated concerning gestures. The Gesture as Simulated Action framework (GSA), provides the necessary background to understand how gestures are manifestations of this connection. According to GSA, gestures are the result of the mental simulation of actions or perceptual states. Consequently, the use of gestures in expressing ideas shows that embodied processes are involved in producing these ideas. More significantly, the use of gestures heightens focus and increases activation of motor and perceptual information. Thus, gestures have a casual role in reasoning as using them leads to an increase in the flow of motor and perceptual information in the reasoning process. However, this does not necessarily translate into more effective reasoning as such information is sometimes not relevant to the problem at hand. The effects of gestures on reasoning are not limited to speakers. The gestures of speakers impact the reasoning of listeners as well. For example, listeners could produce similar simulations to speakers by attending to the gestures of the speakers.

More evidence on the role of gestures in reasoning comes from the study of mathematical and geometric reasoning. Gestures and particularly dynamic depictive gestures (i.e. gestures that are used to represent and show the transformation of objects ) are linked to better performance in snap judgment (intuition), insight, and mathematical reasoning for proof. It has also been shown that the use of dynamic depictive gestures is associated with better mathematical reasoning. Moreover, directing learners to use such gestures, facilitate justification and proof activities.

Emotion

Table showing response times for the positive, negative, and neutral valence conditions in the approach and avoidance experiment. Participants were significantly faster for the "positive toward" condition regardless of the central word's valence.

Embodied cognition theories have provided rigorous accounts of emotion and the processing of information about emotion. In this respect, experiencing and re-experiencing an emotion involve overlapping mental processes. When re-experiencing an emotion, through the interconnections of the neurons that were active during the original experience, a partial multimodal reenactment of the experience is produced. One of the reasons why only parts of the original neural populations are reactivated is that attention is selectively focused on certain aspects of the experience that are most salient and important for the individual.

Re-experience of emotion is produced in the originally implicated sensory-motor systems as if the individual were there in the very situation, the very emotional state, or with the very object of thought. For example, the embodiment of anger might involve muscle tension used to strike, the enervation of certain facial muscles to frown, etc. Such simulation is backed by specialized mirror neuron or a "mirror neuron system", which maps the correspondences between the observed and performed actions. However, there is no consensus about the exact location of the mirror neurons, whether these neurons constitute a system, and whether there actually are mirror neurons.

Theories of embodiment propose that the processing of emotional states and the concepts we use to refer to them are partly based on one's own perceptual, motor, and somatosensory systems. For instance, Niedenthal's (2007) research shows, through manipulations of facial expressions and posture under controlled laboratory settings, how the embodiment of a person's emotion casually affects the way emotional information is processed. Similarly, Well & Petty showed that nodding the head while listening to persuasive messages led to more positive attitudes toward the message than when shaking the head. Duclos et al. led participants to adopt various bodily positions indirectly associated with different feelings such as fear, anger, and sadness and found that these corporeal postures modulated the experienced affect.

Given the significant role emotions (e.g., fear and hope) play in an individual's life, research has been done linking embodiment, motivation and behaviour to investigate the intrinsic tendencies to act towards or away from a given stimuli. The approach and avoidance conflict (AAC) or approach and avoidance task (AAT) describes a natural behavioural bias to approach pleasant stimuli and avoid unpleasant ones (congruent response) faster than approaching unpleasant stimuli and avoiding pleasant ones (incongruent responses). According to Elliot (2006),

An image explaining the approach and avoidance task. The top image depicts the zooming-out effect for avoidance and the bottom image the zooming-in effect for approach (as indicated by the arrows on the computer screen). The smaller images exemplify the approach and avoidance task performed by participants when using either the response pad or the joystick.

"The approach-avoidance distinction is fundamental and basic to motivation, so much that it may be used as a conceptual lens through which to view the structure and function of self-regulation"

The AAT has been investigated in different scenarios and with different types of stimuli such as words and images. A study focusing on the AAT on embodied cognition, for example, examined people's response to positive and negative words presented on the center of a screen by moving them away or towards the center. The study concludes that participants moved the given positive words towards the center of the screen while moving the negative words away from the center of the screen. In conformity with the AAT, participants showed an approach effect for positive words and avoidance effects for negative words. In a recent study on emotional or affective priming, the AAT was used to demonstrate the interaction between emotions and visual exploration. Pictures of news pages were presented on the computer screen and eye movements were measured. Researchers found out that the participants' harmonious bodily interaction during the emotional preparation process shows that their interest in the image's content displayed on the computer screen increased. These findings demonstrate the effect of emotional priming in the approach and avoidance behavior. Furthermore, a recent study on the behavior of approach and avoidance suggests that there is an embodied component that is crucial to it. To investigate the role of gestures in AAT, participants were asked to react to positive and negative stimuli by either pressing a (far or near) button on a response pad; or by pushing forward or pulling backward a joystick. Researchers reported a significant response time advantage for the congruent responses when performed with the joystick and none when performed with the response pad. The fact that participants are faster at responding to the stimuli with the joystick seems to suggest the role of a crucial embodied component. In contrast to the response pad, the joystick couples more naturally with the body (hand) for the performance of the action and facilitate the gesture of approaching or avoiding positive or negative stimuli.

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 behavior. 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. Furthermore, some researchers argues that at least some abstract words are semantically grounded in emotion knowledge and, therefore, "embodied". Whereas the meanings of the words "eye" and "grasp" can be explained to a degree, by pointing to objects and actions, those of "beauty" and "freedom" can not.  Abstract terms show a strong tendency to be semantically linked to knowledge about emotions. In addition, abstract words strongly activate anterior cingulate cortex, a site known to be relevant for emotion processing. Motor system activation for emotion-expressing body parts was indeed found when adults processed abstract emotion words, indicating that, for one important class of abstract concepts, semantic grounding in emotion-expressing action can partly explain the meaning–symbol link.

Self-regulation

The basic idea underlying findings on embodied cognition is that cognition is composed of experiences that are multimodal and spread throughout the body, not in a way that amodal semantic nodes are stored purely in the mind. In line with this idea of embodied cognition, the body itself can also be involved in self-regulation.

Self-regulation can be defined as the capacity of organisms to successfully implement goal-consistent responses despite distracting or countervailing influences. Most people undergo a dilemma when they encounter immediate pains to gain long-term benefits. When facing this dilemma, the body can help augment willpower by evoking nonconscious willpower-strengthening goals that boost people's ongoing conscious attempts to facilitate their pursuit of long-term goals.

In a study, the effect of muscle-firming on donating money to Haiti was investigated. The participants either held the pen to fill out the donation sheet in their fingers ("control conditions") or in their hands ("muscle-firming" condition). Significantly more participants of the "muscle-firming" group donated money than of the control group. One can therefore deduce that firming one's muscle can help to get over their physical aversion to viewing the devastation in Haiti and spend money. Similarly, physical or environmental cues signal the energetic costs of action and, subsequently, influence willingness to engage in additional volitional action. According to a set of studies by Shalev (2014), exposure to physical or conceptual thirst or dryness-related cues reduces perceived energy and in turn, decreases self-regulation These studies suggest that 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. To navigate the social world, one must approach helpful resources such as friends and avoid dangers like foes. Facial expression can be a signal for evaluation whether a person is desirable or dangerous. While the emotional signal might be ambiguous, embodied cognition can aid in clarifying others' emotions. In a study by Niedenthal, Brauer, Halberstadt, & Innes-Ker (2001), participants were able to identify expression shifts faster when they mimicked them in contrast to participants holding a pen in their mouths that froze their facial muscles, therefore, unable to mimic facial expressions. Other 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. The studies above may suggest that embodied cognition could serve a functional purpose by assisting in self-regulatory processes.

Social cognition

Results from a social embodied cognition study that illustrate the relationship between positive emotions, observed behavioral synchrony, and embodied rapport.

In social psychology and, and more specifically in social cognition, research focuses on how people interact and influence one another. In the context of embodiment, research in social cognition investigates how the presence of people and the interactions with them affects thoughts, feelings and behaviour. More precisely, social cognition in accordance with the embodiment thesis proposes that thoughts, feelings and behaviour are grounded in sensory experiences and bodily states.

In the field of phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty's intercorporéité means that when meeting a person, one initially experiences the other person via his/her bodily expressions, which has an impact before cognitive reflections. This phenomenon is investigated in social psychology and is known as nonverbal synchrony. Synchrony during social interaction arises spontaneously and is often independent of conscious information processing.

In a dyadic social interaction study by Tschacher et al. (2014), same-sex participants interacted verbally in cooperative, competitive, and 'fun task' conditions. The focus of this study was to investigate the connection between the participants' affectivity and nonverbal synchrony. Results showed that positive emotions were associated with positive synchrony while negative emotions were associated negatively. Furthermore, the findings point towards a causal relation between synchrony and emotions with synchrony leading to affect rather than vice versa. In a similar study, same-sex participant pairs were instructed to alternate asking certain questions and to progressively self-disclose. Results show that people spontaneously move together in space and synchronize their movement which enhances the quality of interaction (embodied rapport). Self-disclosure and behavioural synchrony correlate with positive emotions towards another person.

These two exemplary studies both revealed that nonverbal, behavioral synchrony of bodily movements influence the psychological experience of the interaction between two people. These findings support the embodiment thesis idea of bodily experiences influencing people's psychological and emotional states.

Sensorimotor contingencies

As a part of the embodied cognition theory, the concept of sensorimotor contingencies (SMCs) claims that the quality of perception is determined by the knowledge of how sensory information changes when one acts in the world. As an example, to look underneath an object, one has to bend down, shift one's head, and change the gaze direction. Proponents of the SMCs theory argue that every stimulus modality / sensory modality such as light, sound pressure, etc. follow specific rules (i.e. sensorimotor contingencies) that govern those changes of sensory information. Consequentially, since those rules differ between modalities, also the qualitative experience of them differs. There are multiple examples which highlight the distinction between SMCs of different modalities. An instance of an SMC distinct for the visual percept is the expansion of the flow pattern on the retina when the body moves forward and the analogous contraction when the body moves backward. In contrast, auditory SMCs are affected by head rotations which change the temporal asynchrony of a received signal between the right and the left ear. This movement mainly affects the amplitude but not the frequency of the sensory input.

Support for the SMCs theory is brought forward by studies on sensory substitution, sensory augmentation, and research on the field of robotics. Research on sensory substitution and sensory substitution devices investigates the replacement of one modality by another (e.g. visual information replaced by tactile information). The core idea is that sensorimotor contingencies of one modality are transmitted via another modality. Sensory augmentation aims for the perception of a new sense via already existing perceptual channels. In this case, sensory augmentation allows for new sensorimotor contingencies to be formed. In the field of robotics, researchers investigate, for example, how visual SMCs are learned on a neural level with the help of a robotic arm and dynamic neural fields.

Applied embodied cognition

Recently, Embodied Cognition has laid a theoretical and empirical foundation which allows the extension of research to its pragmatic uses. Principles underlying Embodied Cognition have begun to be applied in many different fields ranging from clinical settings, education, sport, to art.

Clinical settings

The procedures and methods of investigation in Clinical Neuropsychology have been directly influenced by localizational and computational theory. Although these models have made numerous contributions to the development of clinical practice, Embodied cognition highlights the role of the body and the sensory-motor experience, allowing a broader vision and a better understanding of cognitive processes under both normal and pathological conditions.

There exist numbers of interventions and therapies which utilize the ability of the body to influence cognitions for individuals with psychological difficulties(https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-49139-002). One of the examples is the one for children’s disorders such as autism which is quite popular and well established. Also, a filed of Psychotherapy (BP; or body-oriented psycho-therapy or somatic psychology), which is prominent in Europe and encompasses “embodied” interventions such as dance and movement therapy, has begun to receive more empirical support. One of the most common integrative treatment of mental illness to the western psychosocial sphere is via mindfulness practice and exercise (Michalak, Burg, & Heidenreich, 2012; Stathopoulou, Powers, Berry, Smits, & Otto, 2006).

Sport

Sports and sport psychology are few of the many fields in which embodied cognition theory has had a strong grasp in. Studies have shown that embodiment thesis comes into action through many ways in sports such as sport-related action perception, understanding, prediction, judgement , training and language comprehension. In Pizzera’s study , from an embodied cognition perspective, the relationship between previous motor and visual experience and current officiating experience of expert judges and referees is examined.It was reported that sports judges who had performed the judged tasks and/or had experience observing others perform the specific tasks would achieve better in judging a certain sport activity compared to someone without this motor and observational experience. In another study, reading comprehension and memory improves if the subject, while reading the description of certain physical activities (e.g basketball actions), performs physical manipulations that are consistent with them.  The action based theory of reading comprehension, asserts that the sensory and motor system are involved during the process of understanding, imagining and remembering an action described in a story, as if the reader was actually perceiving or executing that action. These studies have shown that embodied cognition has played a major role in sports and sport psychology

According to a study by Norden and Leman (2007) embodied music cognition views music experience from a view point of action and perception. We can observe that many people move when they listen to music and in many cultures there is no clear distinction between music and dance. Through these different movements of the body, it is assumed that people are able to give meaning to music. This is different from the traditional approach to music cognition, which bases musical meaning on merely perception-based analysis of musical structure. Through the measurement of sounds, movement, human physiology, and computational modelling, music-embodied cognition is currently building up reliable knowledge about the role of the human body in meaning formation. Embodied music cognition is potentially applicable to better understand the role of music in social interactions. Multiple studies show that children move more in synchrony with music when they dance as a group.

Social psychology

Embodiment has also important potential applications in social psychology, where researchers have studied how our own bodily states influence our understanding and interaction with others. William and Bargh (2008), for example, provided a powerful demonstration of the influence of bodily states on social judgments and behaviour. They described that people's experiences with physical temperature per se can influence their perceptions of and prosocial behavior toward other people, without their awareness. According to Mussweiler (2006), participants engaged in motor movements that symbolized a particular social category, which primed the use of that category in social judgement.

Challenges

Research on embodied cognition is extremely broad, covering a wide range of concepts. Methods to study how our cognition is embodied vary from experiment to experiment based on the operational definition used by researchers. There is much evidence for this embodiment, although interpretation of results and their significance may be disputed. Researchers continue to search for the best way to study and interpret the theory of embodied cognition.

Research with preverbal infants

Daum at al. suggested that pre-verbal infants may be considered an ideal channel for studying embodied cognition, especially embodied social cognition. since they utilise symbols less than adults do. Some (Longo, 2009) criticised this notion since it may be impossible to know which stage of a preverbal infant is supposed to be the "ideal model" for embodied social cognition, as infant cognition changes dramatically throughout the preverbal period. A 9-month-old has reached a different developmental stage than a 2-month-old.

Another major issue is whether or not a particular ability reflects an embodied mode of processing. Some claim that 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. Longo (2009) pointed out that it is problematic in that there is no apparent reason to suppose that the abilities revealed through looking-time paradigm reflect embodied processing. For the distinction between embodied and symbolic modes of processing to be useful in generating testable experimental hypotheses, it must be clear what sort of evidence could, at least in principle, allow a researcher to determine whether or not any particular ability is embodied.

Replication crisis and misinterpretation

It has been shown that some of the famous findings in embodied cognition have failed to reproduce the same results as the originals. Take the "power poses" studies for example, the claim that physically expanding your body can increase one's confidence has failed to replicate in several studies. A study that showed sensations of weight activate concepts of importance, which in turn may affect morality-related variables has also failed to be recreated. And, some researchers also could not replicate the previous findings claiming that holding a warm cup creates a sense of interpersonal warmth. These findings are all related to the idea that bodily experiences influence cognitive process that is typically thought of as solely a mental activity.

The fact that they failed to replicate the same results does not prove the body does not affect cognition at all. Still, there are numbers of findings within the topic of embodied cognition that are scientifically sound. However, some say many of the failed embodiment findings rely on priming. And many cases of facilitative movements of the body due to priming may be incorrectly labeled as evidence of embodied cognition. The pencil-in-teeth study may be the examples of priming. 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. Priming (pencil in teeth, lips) may causally induce certain perceptual-motor activity that, in turn, causally induces certain cognitive processes, without the perceptual-motor activity constituting cognitive processing.

See also

• Action-specific perception
• Active inference
• Blue Brain Project
• Cognitive biology
• Cognitive linguistics
• Cognitive neuropsychology
• Cognitive neuroscience
• Cognitive science
• Conceptual blending
• Conceptual metaphor
• Ecological psychology
• Embodied bilingual language
• Embodied cognitive science
• Embodied embedded cognition
• Embodied music cognition
• Embodied phenomenology
• Enactivism
• Extended cognition
• Extended mind thesis
• Externalism
• Feeling
• Image schema
• Metaphors We Live By
• Moravec's paradox
• Motor cognition
• Neuroconstructivism
• Neuropsychology
• Neurophenomenology
• Philosophy of mind
• Plant cognition
• Where Mathematics Comes From
• Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things

Further reading

• Brook RA (1999). Cambrian Intelligence: The Early History of the New AI. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-52263-2.
• Clark A (1997). Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-53156-9.
• Damásio A (1999). The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 0-15-601075-5.
• Edelman G (2004). Wider than the Sky: The Phenomenal Gift of Consciousness. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-10229-1.
• Gallagher S (2005). How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-920416-0.
• Hyun JS, Luck SJ (February 2007). "Visual working memory as the substrate for mental rotation". Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 14 (1): 154–158. doi:10.3758/bf03194043. PMID 17546746.
• Lakoff G, Johnson M (1980). Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-46801-1.
• Lakoff G (1987). Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-46804-6.
• Lakoff G, Turner M (1989). More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-46812-7.
• Lakoff G, Johnson M (1999). Philosophy In The Flesh: the Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought. Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-05674-1.
• Lakoff G, Núñez RE (2001). Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-03771-2.
• Maturana M, Varela F (1987). The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding. Boston: Shambhala. ISBN 0-87773-373-2.
• Pfeifer R (2001). Understanding Intelligence. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-16181-8.
• Greeno JG, Moore JL (1993). "Situativity and symbols: Response to Vera and Simon". Cognitive Science. 17: 49–59. doi:10.1207/s15516709cog1701_3. S2CID 2258750.
• Wilson M (March 2001). "The case for sensorimotor coding in working memory". Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 8 (1): 44–57. doi:10.3758/BF03196138. PMID 11340866. S2CID 8984921.

External links

• [1], a special issue of Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology and the Arts. Guest edited by Shaun Gallagher.
• Embodiment and Experientialism from the Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics (pdf)
• Embodied Cognition: A Field Guide (pdf) – from an Artificial Intelligence perspective
• Where the Action Is by Paul Dourish- for applications to human-computer interaction.
• Pragmatism, Ideology, and Embodiment: William James and the Philosophical Foundations of Embodiment by Tim Rohrer
• 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
• Embodiment Resources – for those researching into embodiment, particularly as it relates to phenomenology, sociology and cognitive neuroscience.
• EUCog – European Network for the Advancement of Artificial Cognitive Systems, Interaction and Robotics Many references here to up to date research on embodiment and enaction