Unintended embodiment of concepts into percepts: Sensory activation boosts attention for same-modality concepts in the attentional blink paradigm

This study shows that sensory priming facilitates reports of same-modality concepts in an attentional blink paradigm. Participants had to detect and report two target words (T1 and T2) presented for 53 ms each among a series of nonwords distractors at a frequency of up to 19 items per second. SOA between target words was set to 53 ms or 213 ms, with reduced attention expected for T2 under the longer SOA (attentional blink) and for T1 under the shorter SOA (lag-1 sparing). These effects were found but reduced when the sensory modality of the concepts matched that of a sensory stimulation occurring prior to the detection trial. Hence, sensory activation increased report for same-modality concepts. This finding reveals that grounded cognition effects (1) are involved in conceptual processing as soon as a word has reached the point of lexical identification and (2) occur independent of intentional access to sensory properties of concepts.     

The situated nature of concepts

For decades the importance of background situations has been documented across all areas of cognition. Nevertheless, theories of concepts generally ignore background situations, focusing largely on bottom-up, stimulus-based processing. Furthermore, empirical research on concepts typically ignores background situations, not incorporating them into experimental designs. A selective review of relevant literatures demonstrates that concepts are not abstracted out of situations but instead are situated. Background situations constrain conceptual processing in many tasks (e.g., recall, recognition, categorization, lexical decision, color naming, property verification, property generation) across many areas of cognition (e.g., episodic memory, conceptual processing, visual object recognition, language comprehension). A taxonomy of situations is proposed in which grain size, meaningfulness, and tangibility distinguish the cumulative situations that structure cognition hierarchically.     

Language, embodiment, and the cognitive niche

Embodied agents use bodily actions and environmental interventions to make the world a better place to think in. Where does language fit into this emerging picture of the embodied, ecologically efficient agent? One useful way to approach this question is to consider language itself as a cognition-enhancing animal-built structure. To take this perspective is to view language as a kind of self-constructed cognitive niche: a persisting but never stationary material scaffolding whose crucial role in promoting thought and reason remains surprisingly poorly understood. It is the very materiality of this linguistic scaffolding, I suggest, that gives it some key benefits. By materializing thought in words, we create structures that are themselves proper objects of perception, manipulation, and (further) thought.     

An investigation of the nature of abstract concepts

Eight abstract concepts were submitted to a procedure designed to test the logical nature of their definition. The hypothesis that they would show a polymorphous prototype structure similar to that found for concrete categories (Hampton, 1979; Rosch & Mervis, 1975) was confirmed for five of the concepts. Reasons for the lack of fit of the prototype model to the remaining concepts and implications for the generality of existing theories of semantic memory are discussed.     

Skepticism about Practical Reason: Transcendental Arguments and Their Limits

Transcendental arguments offer a particularlypowerful strategy for combating skepticism. Such arguments, after all, attempt to show thata particular skepticism is not simply mistakenbut inconsistent or self-refuting. Whilethus tempting to philosophers struggling withskepticism of various sorts, the boldconclusions of these arguments have longrendered them suspicious in the eyes of many. In fact, in a famous paper from 1968 BarryStroud develops what is often taken to be adecisive case against transcendental argumentsin general. Recent work in the area of practical reason,however, suggests that such arguments stillhave their defenders. Theorists such as JamesDreier and Christine Korsgaard have reliedexplicitly on transcendental arguments tojustify certain principles of practical reason. Can such arguments overcome Stroud's objection? In what follows, I argue that they can. However effective Stroud's general criticismmay be in other areas, it does not apply in therealm of practical reason. Nevertheless, thereare strict limits on how far transcendentalarguments can take us. In particular, despiteKorsgaard's efforts, they cannot succeed inestablishing a rational foundation formorality.     

For a cognitive neuroscience of concepts: Moving beyond the grounding issue

Cognitive neuroscience research on conceptual knowledge often is discussed with respect to “embodiment” or “grounding.” We tried to disentangle at least three distinct claims made using these terms. One of these, the view that concepts are entirely reducible to sensory-motor representations, is untenable and diminishing in the literature. A second is the view that concepts and sensory-motor representations “interact,” and a third view addresses the question of how concepts are neurally organized—the neural partitions among concepts of different kinds, and where these partitions are localized in cortex. We argue that towards the second and third issues, much fruitful research can be pursued, but that no position on them is specifically related to “grounding.” Furthermore, to move forward on them, it is important to precisely distinguish different kinds of representations—conceptual vs. sensory-motor—from each other theoretically and empirically. Neuroimaging evidence often lacks such specificity. We take an approach that distinguishes conceptual from sensory-motor representations by virtue of two properties: broad generality and tolerance to the absence of sensory-motor associations. We review three of our recent experiments that employ these criteria in order to localize neural representations of several specific kinds of nonsensory attributes: functions, intentions, and belief traits. Building on past work, we find that neuroimaging evidence can be used fruitfully to distinguish interesting hypotheses about neural organization. On the other hand, most such evidence does not speak to any clear notion of “grounding” or “embodiment,” because these terms do not make clear, specific, empirical predictions. We argue that cognitive neuroscience will proceed most fruitfully by relinquishing these terms.     

Relationships between proenvironmental attitudes and concepts of nature

The author investigated relationships between proenvironmental attitudes and concepts of nature. Proenvironmental attitudes were measured on a 5-point scale containing 27 items. The author developed a 5-point scale containing 20 items to assess concepts of nature. The author administered those 2 scales to 140 young adults and adolescents at 2 Japanese institutions of higher education. An investigation of 6 proenvironmental attitudes and 20 concepts of nature showed some significant relationships. Factor analysis of the 20 concepts of nature produced 2 factors: Positive Evaluation of Nature and Rejection of Manipulation of Human Life. Most relationships were significant between the scores for the 6 proenvironmental attitudes and those for the 2 factors of concepts of nature.     

出土文献中的易卦符号再认识

目前所发现的出土文献中的易卦符号,不是数字卦,也就是说并非由数字构成。数字卦所谓的集中说,十进位数制说都不能成立。这些易卦仍然是由符号构成的,对出土的易卦符号要区别经文和实际占筮,在实际占筮中应该是由四象符号构成,而在经文中则就是阴阳卦画。出土文献中两组并列的易卦,一般看作是本卦和之卦的关系,但不符合本卦和之卦的出卦概率,而符合两次占卦的出卦概率,因而实际可能是两次占筮的结果。     

The swaying form: imagination,metaphor, embodiment

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences - How is it that metaphors are meaningful, yet we have so much trouble saying exactly what they mean? I argue that metaphoric thought is an act of...     

Temporal experience in anxiety: embodiment,selfhood, and the collapse of meaning

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences - This essay explores the unique temporal experience in anxiety. Drawing on first-person accounts as well as examples from literature, I attempt to show how...     

The embodied nature of medical concepts: image schemas and language for pain

Cognitive linguistics assumes that knowledge is both embodied and situated as far as it is acquired through our bodily interaction with the world in a specific environment (e.g. Barsalou in Lang Cogn Process 18:513–562, 2003; Connell et al. in PLoS One 7:3, 2012). Therefore, embodiment provides an explanation to the mental representation and linguistic expression of concepts. Among the first, we find multimodal conceptual structures, like image schemas, which are schematic representations of embodied experiences resulting from our conceptualization of the surrounding environment (Tercedor Sánchez et al. in J Spec Transl 18:187–205, 2012). Furthermore, the way we interact with the environment and its objects is dynamic and configures how we refer to concepts both by means of images and lexicalizations. In this article, we investigate how image schemas underlie verbal and visual representations. They both evoke concepts based on exteroception, interoception and proprioception which can be lexicalized through language. More specifically, we study (1) a multimodal corpus of medical texts to examine how image schemas lexicalize in the language of medicine to represent specialized concepts and (2) medical pictures to explore the depiction of image-schematic concepts, in order to account for the verbal and visual representation of embodied concepts. We explore the concept pain, a sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, using corpus analysis tools (Sketch Engine) to extract information about the lexicalization of underlying image schemas in definitions and defining contexts. Then, we use the image schemas behind medical concepts to consistently select images which depict our experience of pain and the way we understand it. Finally, such lexicalizations and visualizations will help us assess how we refer to pain both verbally and visually.     

Out of the body: embodiment and its vicissitudes

Body‐mind dualism and the consequent neglect of the body of the analyst can have important negative effects on the analytical process leading all too often to misinterpretations of the analysand's verbal and non‐verbal communications and to disturbances of analytical temporality. This is intensified when we are dealing with individuals where disembodiment and states of psychic deadness are central features. The paper explores the philosophical roots of the idea of a disembodied mind and the way in which this impacts our relationship with the world. While André Green's concept of the dead mother and disturbances in the sense of self‐agency have been held to play an important role in states of psychic deadness, I suggest that it is rather disturbances in the sense of body ownership and of the body image which are more central. The paper then discusses the particular kinds of countertransference that can be evoked in the analyst when we find ourselves dealing with this type of patient and suggests how we can use our embodied countertransference to become aware of and elaborate our own feelings of deadness in order to overcome the loss of temporality that is characteristic of such states. This is illustrated with reference to my work with a young man with a masochistic perversion and a severe disturbance of the body image with an accompanying profound sense of psychic deadness.