Davis & Markman 2012 - Embodied Cognition as a Practical Paradigm

Embodied Cognition as a Practical Paradigm: Introductionto the Topic, The Future of Embodied Cognition

Joshua Ian Davis,a Arthur B. Markmanb

aDepartment of Psychology, Barnard College of Columbia UniversitybDepartment of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin

Received 10 August 2012; accepted 12 August 2012

Abstract

Embodied cognition pertains to the consequences on thought and emotion of living with our par-

ticular human sensory and motor systems. The consequences are quite varied, and researchers across

the cognitive sciences have made great discoveries in line with this principle. However, while we

offer this principle, it is necessarily broad, and searching for a single unifying theme has not brought

researchers together behind a clearly defined endeavor. Rather than attempt to do so, we embrace the

variation and specificity in research endeavors across the cognitive sciences to forge a practical sense

in which embodied cognition can be a useful paradigm within which to think and work. This topic,

The Future of Embodied Cognition, includes contributions from eight sets of authors communicating

how embodied cognition has and will influence specific approaches within their disciplines. Through

this format, the lessons from each contribution can be easily shared with colleagues across disci-

plines. As these lessons continue to be shared, a paradigm that is of practical use will emerge, and its

coherence across disciplines will follow. To illustrate the practical aspect of this approach, in this

introductory paper, we take one lesson from each contribution that must be shared and illustrate how

each lesson can apply to a single, specific topic of study.

Keywords: Interoception; Social psychology; Cognitive psychology; Developmental psychology;

Philosophy; Robotics; Cognitive linguistics; Application

Although a number of studies and theoretical accounts of embodied cognition have

appeared in the recent literature, there is a question about whether embodied cognition is

comprehensible as a single idea, and thus whether it is a worthwhile framework. Some argue

that although we can point to shared insight, there has not been enough substance to pull the

work together. The rise of embodied cognition across the cognitive sciences has been driven

Correspondence should be sent to Joshua Ian Davis, Department of Psychology, Barnard College of Colum-

bia University, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027. E-mail: [email protected]

Topics in Cognitive Science 4 (2012) 685–691Copyright � 2012 Cognitive Science Society, Inc. All rights reserved.ISSN: 1756-8757 print / 1756-8765 onlineDOI: 10.1111/j.1756-8765.2012.01227.x

by the understanding that the mind cannot be understood as a computer-like information

processor alone, independent of the particular sensory input and motor output systems to

which it is connected. Rather, there is value in considering how we think and emote as a

result of our particular sensory and motor systems.

It is hard to evaluate broad proposals for embodied cognition, however, because they

often make few specific testable predictions (e.g., Barsalou, 2008; Glenberg, 2010). As an

alternative, the approach of this collection of papers is to embrace the diversity in the topics

we study across disciplines, to focus on specific research programs in those disciplines, and

to provide a forum in which insights from across disciplines can inspire colleagues from

other disciplines. As researchers develop their ideas on these shared presuppositions, a

coherent paradigm will emerge, and this paradigm will likely allow us to see solutions to

our respective research questions in novel ways.

This collection of papers, The Future of Embodied Cognition, provides lessons of specific

kinds from each of eight sets of authors. These lessons concern (a) the way embodied cogni-

tion is used in their disciplines, (b) the trends that currently exist in these disciplines, and (c)

the direction that embodied cognition is taking in these disciplines. In this introductory

paper, we highlight one lesson of immediate value from each discipline, which we believe

has not yet adequately entered the shared thought lexicon.

When first reading each lesson, it may not be clear how one might apply it. Thus, to illus-

trate, we offer an example topic and point toward how each lesson might influence thinking

on that topic, as we introduce that lesson. As our example, consider the role of the amygdala

in emotion. The amygdala has been shown to be active in fear (LeDoux, 1996). One could

ask whether fear therefore happens in the amygdala, whether the amygdala is responsible

for the experience, whether it computes the degree of threat, whether it detects unusual pat-

terns, or so on. How does one determine what the amygdala computes? To begin, we turn to

lesson 1, from this Topic’s discussion of Interoception (Herbert & Pollatos, 2012).

Lesson 1, Interoception as mechanism: If we take embodied cognition seriously, then a

variety of states of the body should influence psychological processing, which includes our

ability to sense changes in bodily state. The sense of the physiological condition of the body

is now being implicated in a host of phenomena, from normal emotional experience, to body

image disorders, to having a sense of self. Neuroimaging based on our understanding of in-

teroception has been a key to illuminating which processes make use of this sense. Research

on interoception is poised to help reveal mechanisms behind the phenomena described in

each of the other disciplines.

Rather than focus on what part of fear the amygdala computes, an alternative approach

recognizes that the amygdala is ideally suited to coordinated autonomic responses (Schwaber,

Kapp, & Higgins, 1980). When activated by the site of smoke in the next room, and

thoughts of feeling trapped, it might trigger an autonomic response. That autonomic activity

will, in turn, activate sensory nerves eventually projecting to the anterior insula (Craig,

2002), which is often active during emotional responding (Kober et al., 2008), and from

there, one can further trace projections, and so on. In this context, the amygdala is an essen-

tial piece of the emotional reaction of fear, but its role makes most sense in the context of

the streams of processing through which it is situated.

686 J. I. Davis, A. B. Markman ⁄ Topics in Cognitive Science 4 (2012)

Lesson 2, from Social Psychology (Meier, Schnall, Schwarz, & Bargh, this issue), Indi-vidual differences: Many lines of research have asked whether bodily movements, bodily

capacities, or body-related metaphors can influence thoughts and emotions. However, there

may be a great deal of individual difference in the degrees to which people are affected by

these factors. Thus, the real story can often lie in examining which beliefs, tendencies, and

motivations lead a person to be more or less influenced by body-related processes.

To illustrate how this can be relevant, consider that there are individual differences in the

degree to which people have biases toward members of their in-group (e.g., based on race,

politics, or sports) and away from members of an out-group. Consider someone who sees

another person across the room. The person is less likely to be perceived as a threat if he or

she is part of that individual’s in-group than part of an out-group (Hugenberg & Bodenhau-

sen, 2003). Stimuli associated with threat activate the amygdala. Individual differences in

strength of in-group ⁄ out-group biases may offer a parametrically varying construct of

empirical value to our example. This kind of individual difference provides an opportunity

to explore what brain or cognitive processes play a role in potentiating or decreasing amyg-

dala reactivity in fear. A researcher might examine which processes correspond to both

amygdala reactivity and differences in strength of group-related bias. Through that, we can

discover more about factors that ready the amygdala to potentiate a fear sequence.

Lesson 3, from Cognitive Psychology (Anderson, Richardson, & Chemero, this issue),

Information processing remains, but what information is processed changes: The informa-

tion processing model that has dominated cognitive psychology needs to be expanded to

include interactions between the body and the environment. These body-environment inter-

actions place constraints on the way that information is processed.

The amygdala might be said to ‘‘compute’’ fear, in the sense that inputs enter in the

form of properties of a stimulus, and then output is in the form of a degree of fear one

should experience. Alternative computations, however, can be described. To aid in this

discussion, consider the case of being trapped in an alley. The ways that an individual can

interact with the alley and other inhabitants greatly determine both the possible responses

one might have, as well as the amount of fear one might experience. Rather than comput-

ing a degree of fear, the amygdala can be viewed as computing whether input from a

number of sources (pertaining, e.g., to one’s self-defense training, one’s level of exhaus-

tion, and the relative size of alley and inhabitants) should sum sufficiently to activate an

endocrine, autonomic, and skeletomuscular reaction to fight, scream, run, or even laugh.

Thus, there is clearly a computation that can be described, but the embodied approach sug-

gests a different kind of computation. It is, moreover, a computation that would be mean-

ingless without unique information about the individual, the environment, and their

potential and kinetic interrelation.

Lesson 4, from Development and Learning (Kontra, Goldin-Meadow, & Beilock, this

issue), Action’s role in learning: Action plays a role in learning. There are many ways it

does so, including building references for conceptual knowledge, preparing for expert per-

ception, and guiding the comprehension of new material. It is also a primary component of

learning, in that it begins to be important in infancy, and the mechanisms by which action is

important in learning appear to be the same throughout life.

J. I. Davis, A. B. Markman ⁄ Topics in Cognitive Science 4 (2012) 687

How might this apply to our example? One proposed role of the amygdala is to associate

a stimulus with a fear response (LeDoux, 1996). There is a sense in which this is seen as a

relatively passive process. For example, when the stimulus co-occurs with a fear response,

with the right timing, and lack of alternative stimuli, then conditioning will occur. However,

stimulus-fear pairings may not be entirely passive. Consider an ambiguous social situation

in which a foreign traveler is trying to learn about whether to trust or fear different people

he or she encounters. His or her actions quite likely influence his or her understanding of a

situation. Whomever he or she approaches might be trusted more as a result, as approach-

related actions can yield positive evaluation (Cacioppo, Priester, & Berntson, 1993). In what

ways, the amygdala researcher might ask, does an approach action involve neural circuitry

that inhibits certain amygdala responses?

Lesson 5, from Philosophy (Kiverstein, this issue), Assumptions about the role of compu-tation influence which hypotheses we test: A distinction has emerged between two views of

what it means to say that the mind is embodied. The first view is a view of the body as a

source of information to central processors, and the second view is one that the body is an

important part of the processing structure of cognition. Testing which of these views is

correct (or when each is) is a thorny challenge in psychology (e.g., Meier, Schnall, Schwarz,

& Bargh, this issue). And yet philosophical arguments illustrate how one view may reduce

to the other when we consider each a type of computation.

The study of the amygdala, as involved in fear, provides a level of specificity with which

a modeler can compare what these two kinds of computations might look like. The notion of

bodily input as a source of information is likely to guide the modeler to attempt to fully

describe types of bodily input without reference to how that information will be used by the

fear processor. In contrast, the notion of bodily input as part of the computation is likely to

lead the modeler to attempt to describe the ways in which bodily input serves as content for

variables, or as steps in a procedure, or other subprocedural aspects of a computation. The

amygdala researcher pondering this question might see the amygdala in terms of a system

that interprets information about the body, or as one that serves more as steps in a subproce-

dure. If a modeler were to undertake to describe both alternatives, the degree to which the

two alternatives differ in meaningful ways (or not) would become apparent.

Lesson 6, from Robotics (Hoffman, this issue), Human-like fluency as a guiding princi-ple: When embodied robotics first began, researchers attempted to perform simple tasks like

obstacle avoidance and navigation using only low-level connections between perceptual and

motor systems without complex internal representations (e.g., Brooks, 1991). More recent

work in this area contains more sophisticated representations that are rooted in the relation-

ship between sensor and effector systems. These robots display human-like fluency in their

physical interactions with people, because of the representations they construct to represent

their surroundings. These representations are more enduring than in older robots and reflect

a principle of integrating representations of sensory input with those of motor control.

Lessons from robotics may inform our example. Amygdalar-mediated fear reactions are

quick and coordinated. That is the essence of fluency. Thus, it is likely that the amygdala

takes advantage of processes that aid fluency. A researcher considering such processes

might shift focus from the stimulus itself to the perceptual symbol systems that may marry


expectations with sensory input. A representation emerging from the latter is likely what

gets paired with a fear reaction during fear learning. After all, the same stimulus (e.g., a

gun-shaped object) is not the same in a toy store and a battleground. From a cognitive van-

tage point, the researcher is then apt to include context, prior experience, and perceptual

similarity, and so on in the description of the eliciting event. From a neural perspective, the

researcher is likely to include greater consideration of the points of neural convergence on

the pathway from sense organ to amygdala, in the description of important steps.

Lesson 7, from Cognitive Linguistics (Lakoff, this issue), Combining neural principleswith theories of metaphor: Neuroscience is now pointing the way toward understanding

what it can mean to claim that embodied conceptual metaphors have a clear source domain

(donating meaning) and clear target domain (appropriating meaning). This is a critical piece

of an argument that embodied experience is a source of conceptual structure, rather than just

one side of a linguistic (or neural) coincidence.

The amygdalar circuitry involved in coordinating fear reactions is phylogenetically old

and has likely been strengthened by a good deal of use by the time one reaches adulthood.

Thus, it is an excellent potential source of meaning in a fear-related metaphor, which can

help bring meaning to a target domain. Considering the amygdalar circuitry as a metaphor

source domain suggests that, while there are many and varied fear-related metaphors,

reasoning based on each will share structural similarities that follow the processing dynam-

ics of the amygdala and its associated circuitry. For example, a person might view his or her

job as one in which his or her superiors are always hunting him or her, and he or she is run-

ning scared. In contrast, a person might be asked to take on more work when already over-

whelmed and feel like a deer caught in the headlights. These metaphors are quite different,

and they can lead to different inferences about how to approach work. And yet some proper-

ties, such as the urgency, lack of perspective, and reliance on away, rather than toward,

motivation, may be activated in very similar ways.

Lesson(s) 8, from the essay on application of embodied cognition (Davis, Benforado,

Esrock, Turner, Dalton, van Noorden, & Leman, this issue), Ramifications of embodied cog-nition in applied areas suggest new basic science questions: People are profitably reevaluat-

ing the humanities, arts, law, and creative realms of cognition in light of embodied

cognition. Legal thinking suggests that our notions of culpability and fairness are likely to

change as a result of the embodied cognition paradigm taking hold. Built spaces are likely

going to be designed to maximize the way a human makes sense of a space. That sense has at

its core a resonance with aspects of the environment that are linear and straight with respect

to a person’s body when he or she moves through the space. Art and literature may partially

derive meaning for an observer from a process of substituting bodily reactivity for some of

the content, to provide a felt sense of the content. Findings on embodied music cognition

suggest that people respond especially to rhythms of 2 Hz because of our biomechanics.

Building on just one of these points, consider the lessons from an application of embod-

ied cognition to law. One could extrapolate from it that our notions of responsibility for our

actions are shifting as a result of the new paradigm. If so, then it makes sense to explore in

greater depth just what aspects of the sequence from stimulus to fear reaction we do have

control over, to what degree, and what we mean by control.


Viewed all together, embodied cognition is about the consequences on thought and

emotion of existing as a human body. We have not said ‘‘in a human body’’ nor ‘‘having a

body,’’ but existing as one. We use this phrasing to highlight that having a body is not a

state, but rather an active element of cognitive processing. Such consequences of existing as

a human body have been explored in many different ways, and we have reached a point in

the cognitive sciences where there is so much work being done within each discipline that

the intradisciplinary findings do not always seem to make contact with those from other dis-

ciplines. As a result, it can be difficult to find a common thread among the different research

programs in this area.

For example, linguists have noted the regular use of embodied metaphors to describe the

world (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Roboticists recognized the value of offloading mental

work onto the environment (Brooks, 1991). Neuroscientists discovered shared use of

‘‘motor’’ systems in perception and social understanding (Keysers & Gazzola, 2006;

Rizzolatti, Fadiga, Gallese, & Fogassi, 1996). Computer scientists designed neural networks

that could act more human than could computers that were based on serial computation

(Medler, 1998). Developmental psychologists illustrated how bodily interactions form a

basis for learning (Smith & Gasser, 2005), and the list goes on. It is hard to find a discipline

within the cognitive sciences in which such discoveries have not been made.

By focusing within independent disciplines, scholars have discovered distinct lessons that

must be shared across disciplines. In our view, different work across disciplines will start to

be recognizably part of the same endeavor, when we share the lessons from each discipline

with each other at regular intervals. From our vantage point, these insights continue to

reflect a shift in basic assumptions about what constitutes the mind. Unlike the cognitive

revolution, this embodied revolution has not been sudden and jarring, but gradual and subtle

until a larger framework became clear. The mind is becoming re-tethered to biology. As we

cross-germinate one another’s fields with the important lessons from our own, this paradig-

matic change will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

We close by suggesting that this shift may have profound consequences beyond our aca-

demic discussions. Consider that being overweight is not just a body issue. It changes one’s

movement and blood flow and many factors that we know are part of systems involved in

thought and emotion. Or consider psycho-somaticisms, placebo effects, and pain manage-

ment. They shift from the realm in which our questions are of the form ‘‘is this possible?’’

to the realm of mechanism––what bodily ⁄ neural processes are influenced by or influence

placebo-expectations, emotions, error detection in the environment, health consequences of

social rejection, and so on? The answers to these questions will have considerable practical

significance. The embodied cognition paradigm is redirecting what it is that must be

explained by the cognitive sciences. That is no small shift.

Note

We dedicate this topic to the memory of our dear colleague, Alasdair Turner.


Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation grant BCS––

1002595 (to J.I.D.).

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Davis & Markman 2012 - Embodied Cognition as a Practical Paradigm