35,381 research outputs found

    Embodiment and designing learning environments

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    There is increasing recognition amongst learning sciences researchers of the critical role that the body plays in thinking and reasoning across contexts and across disciplines. This workshop brings ideas of embodied learning and embodied cognition to the design of instructional environments that engage learners in new ways of moving within, and acting upon, the physical world. Using data and artifacts from participants' research and designs as a starting point, this workshop focuses on strategies for how to effectively leverage embodiment in learning activities in both technology and non-technology environments. Methodologies for studying/assessing the body's role in learning are also addressed

    The Mechanics of Embodiment: A Dialogue on Embodiment and Computational Modeling

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    Embodied theories are increasingly challenging traditional views of cognition by arguing that conceptual representations that constitute our knowledge are grounded in sensory and motor experiences, and processed at this sensorimotor level, rather than being represented and processed abstractly in an amodal conceptual system. Given the established empirical foundation, and the relatively underspecified theories to date, many researchers are extremely interested in embodied cognition but are clamouring for more mechanistic implementations. What is needed at this stage is a push toward explicit computational models that implement sensory-motor grounding as intrinsic to cognitive processes. In this article, six authors from varying backgrounds and approaches address issues concerning the construction of embodied computational models, and illustrate what they view as the critical current and next steps toward mechanistic theories of embodiment. The first part has the form of a dialogue between two fictional characters: Ernest, the �experimenter�, and Mary, the �computational modeller�. The dialogue consists of an interactive sequence of questions, requests for clarification, challenges, and (tentative) answers, and touches the most important aspects of grounded theories that should inform computational modeling and, conversely, the impact that computational modeling could have on embodied theories. The second part of the article discusses the most important open challenges for embodied computational modelling

    Embodied Metaphors and Creative “Acts”

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    Creativity is a highly sought after skill. To inspire people’s creativity, prescriptive advice in the form of metaphors abound: We are encouraged to think outside the box, to consider the problem on one hand, then on the other hand, and to put two and two together to achieve creative breakthroughs. These metaphors suggest a connection between concrete bodily experiences and creative cognition. Inspired by recent advances on body-mind linkages under the emerging vernacular of embodied cognition, we explored for the first time whether enacting metaphors for creativity enhances creative problem-solving. In five studies, findings revealed that both physically and psychologically embodying creative metaphors promote fluency, flexibility, and/or originality in problem-solving. Going beyond prior research that focused primarily on the kind of embodiment that primes preexisting knowledge, we provide the first evidence that embodiment can also activate cognitive processes conducive for generating previously unknown ideas and connections

    Review of Minds, Causes, and Mechanisms

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    Spectators’ aesthetic experiences of sound and movement in dance performance

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    In this paper we present a study of spectators’ aesthetic experiences of sound and movement in live dance performance. A multidisciplinary team comprising a choreographer, neuroscientists and qualitative researchers investigated the effects of different sound scores on dance spectators. What would be the impact of auditory stimulation on kinesthetic experience and/or aesthetic appreciation of the dance? What would be the effect of removing music altogether, so that spectators watched dance while hearing only the performers’ breathing and footfalls? We investigated audience experience through qualitative research, using post-performance focus groups, while a separately conducted functional brain imaging (fMRI) study measured the synchrony in brain activity across spectators when they watched dance with sound or breathing only. When audiences watched dance accompanied by music the fMRI data revealed evidence of greater intersubject synchronisation in a brain region consistent with complex auditory processing. The audience research found that some spectators derived pleasure from finding convergences between two complex stimuli (dance and music). The removal of music and the resulting audibility of the performers’ breathing had a significant impact on spectators’ aesthetic experience. The fMRI analysis showed increased synchronisation among observers, suggesting greater influence of the body when interpreting the dance stimuli. The audience research found evidence of similar corporeally focused experience. The paper discusses possible connections between the findings of our different approaches, and considers the implications of this study for interdisciplinary research collaborations between arts and sciences

    Reading and company: embodiment and social space in silent reading practices

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    Reading, even when silent and individual, is a social phenomenon and has often been studied as such. Complementary to this view, research has begun to explore how reading is embodied beyond simply being ‘wired’ in the brain. This article brings the social and embodied perspectives together in a very literal sense. Reporting a qualitative study of reading practices across student focus groups from six European countries, it identifies an underexplored factor in reading behaviour and experience. This factor is the sheer physical presence, and concurrent activity, of other people in the environment where one engages in individual silent reading. The primary goal of the study was to explore the role and possible associations of a number of variables (text type, purpose, device) in selecting generic (e.g. indoors vs outdoors) as well as specific (e.g. home vs library) reading environments. Across all six samples included in the study, participants spontaneously attested to varied, and partly surprising, forms of sensitivity to company and social space in their daily efforts to align body with mind for reading. The article reports these emergent trends and discusses their potential implications for research and practice

    Computational and Robotic Models of Early Language Development: A Review

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    We review computational and robotics models of early language learning and development. We first explain why and how these models are used to understand better how children learn language. We argue that they provide concrete theories of language learning as a complex dynamic system, complementing traditional methods in psychology and linguistics. We review different modeling formalisms, grounded in techniques from machine learning and artificial intelligence such as Bayesian and neural network approaches. We then discuss their role in understanding several key mechanisms of language development: cross-situational statistical learning, embodiment, situated social interaction, intrinsically motivated learning, and cultural evolution. We conclude by discussing future challenges for research, including modeling of large-scale empirical data about language acquisition in real-world environments. Keywords: Early language learning, Computational and robotic models, machine learning, development, embodiment, social interaction, intrinsic motivation, self-organization, dynamical systems, complexity.Comment: to appear in International Handbook on Language Development, ed. J. Horst and J. von Koss Torkildsen, Routledg

    Embodiment and embodied design

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    Picture this. A preverbal infant straddles the center of a seesaw. She gently tilts her weight back and forth from one side to the other, sensing as each side tips downward and then back up again. This child cannot articulate her observations in simple words, let alone in scientific jargon. Can she learn anything from this experience? If so, what is she learning, and what role might such learning play in her future interactions in the world? Of course, this is a nonverbal bodily experience, and any learning that occurs must be bodily, physical learning. But does this nonverbal bodily experience have anything to do with the sort of learning that takes place in schools - learning verbal and abstract concepts? In this chapter, we argue that the body has everything to do with learning, even learning of abstract concepts. Take mathematics, for example. Mathematical practice is thought to be about producing and manipulating arbitrary symbolic inscriptions that bear abstract, universal truisms untainted by human corporeality. Mathematics is thought to epitomize our species’ collective historical achievement of transcending and, perhaps, escaping the mundane, material condition of having a body governed by haphazard terrestrial circumstance. Surely mathematics is disembodied

    Merging second-person and first-person neuroscience

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    Schilbach et al. contrast second-person and third-person approaches to social neuroscience. We discuss relations between second-person and first-person approaches, arguing that they cannot be studied in isolation. Contingency is central for converging first- and second-person approaches. Studies of embodiment show how contingencies scaffold first-person perspective and how the transition from a third- to a second-person perspective fundamentally involves first-person contributions

    What are you or who are you? The emergence of social interaction between dog and Unidentified Moving Object (UMO)

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    Robots offer new possibilities for investigating animal social behaviour. This method enhances controllability and reproducibility of experimental techniques, and it allows also the experimental separation of the effects of bodily appearance (embodiment) and behaviour. In the present study we examined dogs’ interactive behaviour in a problem solving task (in which the dog has no access to the food) with three different social partners, two of which were robots and the third a human behaving in a robot-like manner. The Mechanical UMO (Unidentified Moving Object) and the Mechanical Human differed only in their embodiment, but showed similar behaviour toward the dog. In contrast, the Social UMO was interactive, showed contingent responsiveness and goal-directed behaviour and moved along varied routes. The dogs showed shorter looking and touching duration, but increased gaze alternation toward the Mechanical Human than to the Mechanical UMO. This suggests that dogs’ interactive behaviour may have been affected by previous experience with typical humans. We found that dogs also looked longer and showed more gaze alternations between the food and the Social UMO compared to the Mechanical UMO. These results suggest that dogs form expectations about an unfamiliar moving object within a short period of time and they recognise some social aspects of UMOs’ behaviour. This is the first evidence that interactive behaviour of a robot is important for evoking dogs’ social responsiveness
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