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An extended view on words. Kinematic evidence. (Symposium: Embodied Cognition and Embodied Understanding: What Do They Mean and How Are They Different?)
No full textRe-enacting the Bodily Self on Stage: Embodied Cognition Meets Psychoanalysis
Full text linkThe embodied approach to cognition consists in a range of theoretical proposals sharing the idea that our concepts are constitutively shaped by the physical and social constraints of our body and environment. Still far from a mutually enriching interplay, in recent years embodied and psychoanalytic approaches are converging on similar constructs as the ones of intersubjectivity, bodily self, and affective quality of verbal communication. Some efforts to cope with the sentient subject were already present in classical cognitivism: having expunged desires and conflicts from the cognitive harmony, bodily emotions re-emerged but only as a noisy dynamic friction. In contrast, the new, neural, embodied cognitive science with its focus on bodily effects/affects has enabled a dialogue between neuro-cognitive perspectives and clinic-psychological ones, through shared conceptual frameworks. I will address crucial issues that should be faced on this reconciling path. With reference to two kinds of contemporary addictions – internet addiction disorder and eating disorders – I will introduce a possible therapeutic approach that is built upon the core role of the acting-sentient bodily self in a dynamic-social and affective environment. In Psychoanalytic Psychodrama, the spontaneous re-enactment of a past (socially and physically constrained) experience is actualized by means of the other, the Auxiliary Ego. This allows homeostatic and social-emotional affects, i.e., drives and instincts, to be re-experienced by the agent, the Protagonist, in a safe scenario. The director-psychoanalyst smoothly traces back this simulation to the motivated, and constrained, early proximal embodied interactions with significant others, and to the related instinctual conflicting aims. The psychoanalytic reframing of classical psychodrama does not merely exploit its original cathartic function, rather stands out for exploring the interpersonal constitution of the self, through an actual “re-somatization” of psychoanalytic therapy. Unspoken/unspeakable feelings pop up on stage: the strength of this treatment mainly rests on re-establishing the priority of the embodied Self over the narrative Self. By pointing out the possible conflicts between these two selves, this method can broaden the embodied cognition perspective. The psychodramatic approach will be briefly discussed in light of connectionist models, to finally address linguistic and methodological pivotal issues
Language comprehension and hand motion simulation
No full textIn five experiments participants were presented with pairs of nouns and verbs. They were asked to decide whether the combinations made sense or not. Half of the participants responded “yes” with the dominant hand, half with the left hand. When pairs referred to manual and mouth actions, participants responded faster with the dominant than with the left hand with sensible sentences. When pairs referred to manual and foot actions the result was opposite. Results suggest that language processing activates an action simulation that is sensitive both to the effector involved and to the goal expressed by the sentence
Comprensione di frasi e sistema motorio: Effetti di interferenza specifici per effettore
No full textWhen Affective Relation Weighs More Than the Mug Handle: Investigating Affective Affordances
Full text linkEnactive and embodied approaches to cognition are becoming increasingly interested in the affective dimension of human experience. Consistently, this issue has been addressed in empirical research, which is paying growing attention to the affective quality of social contexts by addressing motor simulations, joint actions, emotional disorders, and body psychotherapy.
Still, while in the relationship between two or more agents the involvement of the affective variable, even when uninvestigated, is intrinsically evoked, in the case of the agent-object relationship the recognition of such engagement requires more specific care.
In laboratory-based studies, when dealing with an object and an observer, the practical opportunities that she is able to perceive and use have been mainly operationalized referring to visual manipulable properties of the object, as shape and orientation, associated with its canonical use. Progressively empirical research introduced, and manipulated, also the physical context, and the required responses, distinguishing between functional and volumetric gestures. Are these ‘affordances’? Strictly speaking no, as these accounts clash with direct perception, but they are undoubtedly elegant approaches suitable for outlining answers (also) to most questions of ecological psychology.
In light of the heated debate on affordances between philosophers and cognitive scientists, we propose to draw upon literature in both fields as our aim is twofold. (1) Exploring the great absentee of empirical investigations conducted so far: the affective dimension of perception-action coupling of our relationship with the physical context. To this end a clarification of the philosophical concept of ‘affective affordance’ would be essential. (2) Specifying some criteria of definition for this construct and suggesting an analysis of AAs in its application to the individual human agent’s practice – for our proposal to be not only theoretical, but suitable for experimental investigation, promoting a constructive dialogue between philosophy and empirical psychology
Le parole, utensili che estendono il nostro corpo
No full textThe body, as the subject or the object of our experience, mediates all our interactions with the world. In contrast with traditional views, recent studies have shown that our sense of body is plastic and can be modified. In this perspective, a number of psychological
and neuroscientific studies have demonstrated that, when humans and monkeys use an instrument to reach a target-object, an extension of their peri-personal space occurs. This extension effect has been demonstrated with monkeys and humans, with neglect patients and with controls, and with a variety of paradigms.
In the last years, both neuroscientists (e.g. Farne’ et al., 2005) and philosophers (e.g., Clark, 2008) have proposed interesting parallels between tool-use and language.
In this paper we intend to propose that words, similarly to tools, enlarge our space of action and modify the sense of our body. We will ground our proposal and discuss it also in light of recent evidence, obtained in our lab with kinematics and other behavioural studies, that shows that words use leads to an extension of our peri-personal space
Language and embodiment
No full textThe paper focuses on the embodied view of cognition applied to language. First we discuss what we intend when we
say that concepts are “embodied”. Then we briefly explain the notion of simulation, addressing also its neurophysiological basis. In the main part of the paper we will focus on concepts mediated by language, presenting behavioral and neuro-physiological evidence of the action/perception systems activation during words and sentences
comprehension
Neural correlates of the implicit processing of grammatical and stereotypical gender violations: A masked and unmasked priming study.
Full text linkThe aim of this study was to explore the neural correlates of the automatic activation of gender stereotypes by using the masked and unmasked priming technique. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants were presented with an Italian third-person singular pronoun (lui or lei) that were preceded by either a grammatically-marked (passeggeraFEM, pensionatoMASC) or stereotypically-associated (e.g. insegnanteFEM, conducenteMASC) role noun. Participants were required to judge the grammatical gender of the personal pronoun ignoring the preceding word. This word was presented in a masked or unmasked way. The results revealed slower reaction times and larger N400, in both the masked and unmasked conditions, when the pronouns were preceded by gender-incongruent than gender-congruent grammatical and stereotypical primes. A P300 effect also emerged in both masked and unmasked conditions for the grammatical gender mismatch between the antecedent and the pronoun. These results provide evidence that gender stereotypes can strongly influence our behavior even under unconscious conditions
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