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EMBODIED CONCEPTUAL REPRESENTATION
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Lecture notes of 8 pages for the course NEUROPSYCHOLOGY at UNN (LECUTRE 9/15)
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Lecture 9 - Embodied conceptual representations of words (lexicon)Previous lecture:
- Language shares its properties with other cognitive systems including music
(Coelsch, et al., 2005), mathematics (Scheepers, et al., 2011; 2019), goal-directed
action (Fadiga, et al., 2009).
- It’s difficult to pin down “language” to a finite set of brain areas. Linguistic behaviour
and its neuroanatomical structures may reflect embodied experiences associated
with language use including perception and action.
From perception and action to representation:
- This is not surprising as we don’t acquire or acquire
knowledge and use language in a vacuum – it comes to
us as a reflection of complex experiences –
sensorimotor, social, and introspective.
- I.E., sensory inputs and interaction with the
environment provides the content that language
encodes. My interest is in how these sensorimotor
aspects are related to the nature of the knowledge
representations.
- Concept = the meaning of a word, object, number.
- Conceptual representations = representations of
concepts formed by the brain during acquisition, storage, and use.
Conceptual domains:
- Useful to look at words in terms of groups (conceptual domains)
- Abstract reps:
- 1. No reference to sensorimotor experience (experiential) Mars is
abstract, Love is not
- 2. No physical reference in the world (phenomenological) Love is
abstract, Mars is not
- 3. Contextual (flexible depending on context) Mars (planet) is
abstract, Mars (candy) is not.
- 4. In neuroscience abstract reps are the are independent of sensorimotor codes.
Embodied cognition:
- Consists of various states;
- Perceptual state (auditory, visual, etc)
- Motor state (action)
- Affective state (emotion)
- All three of these states are important in the event
Symbolic Theories: “Sandwich” Approach
- Peripheral processes (perception and action) provide inputs and outputs.
- Cognitive processor “converts” perceptual and motor inputs into symbolic
representations.
- This has long philosophical roots so, is seen as cartesian dualism.
, - Cartesian Dualism = Perception, cognition, and action are independent cognitive
systems (Decartes 1664).
- The Consequence of this approach means Conceptual representations are
independent from the associated sensorimotor experiences.
Embodied Theories: Interactive (embodied) Approach
- Embodied theories assume that cognition reflects constant interplay between brain,
body, and world.
- Perception and action affect conceptual representations and vice versa.
- Basic predictions:
- Traces of perceptual and motor activations should be detectable during concept use,
both in behaviour and in the brain.
- Blocking access to the perceptual and/or motor control areas (e.g. via TMS) should
impair concept use.
- Suggests the same three systems are involved in the experience itself, imaging the
experience and talking about the experience (Niedenthal, et al. (2007)).
Philosophical Roots:
- Empiricism & Functional Psychology:
- William James (1912). Essays on Radical Empiricism. “To be radical, an empiricism
must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly
experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.”
- States any concept needs to be directly experienced, so highlights the importance of
embodied experiences in how we form conceptual representations and cognitive
structures.
- John Dewey (1896). The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology. “To see the organism in
nature, the nervous system in the organism, the brain in the nervous system, the
cortex in the brain is the answer to the problems which haunt philosophy”
20th Century Phenomenology:
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1912). Phenomenology of Perception. “The body is our
general medium for having a world. …elaborating upon primary actions and moving
from their literal to a figurative meaning, it manifests through them a core of new
significance.”
- Highlights that without understanding important experiences we cannot understand
fully how our concepts give rise to meaning and make it possible for us to
understand what words mean.
- George Lakoff & Mark Johnson (1999). Philosophy in the Flesh. “The mind is not
merely embodied, but embodied in such a way that our conceptual systems draw
largely upon the commonalities of our bodies and of the environments we live in.”
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