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Embodiment, Ego-Space, and Action
The majority of research on human perception and action examines sensors and effectors in relative isolation. What is less often considered in these research domains is that humans interact with a perceived world in which they themselves are part of the perceptual representation, as are the positions and actions (potential or ongoing) of other active beings. It is this self-in-world representation that we call embodiment. Increasingly, research demonstrates that embodiment is fundamental to both executing and understanding spatially and interpersonally directed action.It has been theorized to play a role in reaching and grasping, locomotion and navigation, infant imitation, spatial and social perspective taking, and neurological dysfunctions as diverse as phantom limb pain and autism. Few formal ideas have been put forward, however, to describe how selfrepresentation functions at a mechanistic level and what neural structures support those functions. This volume reports on the 2006 Carnegie Symposium on Cognition, which brought together the contributions to these issues from a group of researchers who span perspectives of behavioral science, neuroscience, developmental psychology and computation. Together they share their findings, ideas, aspirations, and concerns.
447 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 26, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 2, 2017
Most of the eleven chapters of Embodiment, Ego-Space, and Action include reports of original experiments and provide integrative overviews. Each chapter runs about 40 pages including 5 to 10 pages of references.
According to the “embodied” analysis of perception and action, brain representations of perceptual input are linked to, or identical with, representations of motor output. One processes incoming perception by covertly simulating the actions that would produce it, and that constitutes understanding of the perception. For example to understand how to catch a fly ball, you have to catch one, or at least go through the motions. Doing is understanding.
I once heard someone in a pizza parlor ask the clerk, “How big is the 14-inch pizza?” What kind of a question is that? What kind of an answer would satisfy it?
In this volume, size and distances are best measured in relation to a person's body, not verbally. For example, experimenters had people throw beanbags to where they thought a previously seen object had been or walk blindfolded to where they thought it was, and beanbag accuracy was a lot better than verbal estimates of the distance. The hypothesis is that a person maintains a “spatial image” (representation) of their surroundings according to the body's activity in the world.
However, the neurological theory underlying this view is tenuous. Embodied cognition researchers aware of their situatedness in the world, and we would expect them to reject a neurological representational theory of mind. Yet in this volume, most are representationalists. They shouldn't be. Their neurological causal story is confused. Perhaps covert motor activity is a consequence of cognitive or metacognitive consideration of perceptual input or of the intention to act. But to call it a representation of perception? That's a stretch.
Shiffrar's article reports experiments in which points of light are placed on an actor at knees, elbows, hips, shoulders, and top of the head. The actor was filmed walking in a darkened room, with only the light points visible, yet people easily identified the pattern as a person walking, even with only 13 light points. When an additional dozen light points were added randomly to the display, moving in the same direction, observers still easily identified the walker, the walker's gender and emotional state, and whether it was a stranger, a friend, or themselves filmed three months earlier. These are remarkable findings.
The author invokes mirror neurons and the motor theory of perception but also admits that perceptual experience has a role in the body-based view of the world. It's not a consistent conclusion.
Another article reviews functional magnetic resonance imaging studies of the human parietal–occipital cortex to establish the existence of a brain representation of “peripersonal space.” Two chapters examine the embodied cognition hypothesis in infants and children. Brian MacWhinney offers a somewhat technical psycholinguistic attempt to replace Chomsky's (disembodied) phrase-structure grammar with one based on situated pragmatics and speech-act theory.
This book will be of interest to anyone working in the field of embodied cognition or allied fields of ecological psychology and situated robotics. Traditionally trained cognitive psychologists should read it to let the embodied cognition movement challenge the default assumption that the brain is a computational device and instead try to view the brain as a control system for the body. The chapters are well written and interesting, but, because they are fairly technical, they are suitable mainly for professionals, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates.
According to the “embodied” analysis of perception and action, brain representations of perceptual input are linked to, or identical with, representations of motor output. One processes incoming perception by covertly simulating the actions that would produce it, and that constitutes understanding of the perception. For example to understand how to catch a fly ball, you have to catch one, or at least go through the motions. Doing is understanding.
I once heard someone in a pizza parlor ask the clerk, “How big is the 14-inch pizza?” What kind of a question is that? What kind of an answer would satisfy it?
In this volume, size and distances are best measured in relation to a person's body, not verbally. For example, experimenters had people throw beanbags to where they thought a previously seen object had been or walk blindfolded to where they thought it was, and beanbag accuracy was a lot better than verbal estimates of the distance. The hypothesis is that a person maintains a “spatial image” (representation) of their surroundings according to the body's activity in the world.
However, the neurological theory underlying this view is tenuous. Embodied cognition researchers aware of their situatedness in the world, and we would expect them to reject a neurological representational theory of mind. Yet in this volume, most are representationalists. They shouldn't be. Their neurological causal story is confused. Perhaps covert motor activity is a consequence of cognitive or metacognitive consideration of perceptual input or of the intention to act. But to call it a representation of perception? That's a stretch.
Shiffrar's article reports experiments in which points of light are placed on an actor at knees, elbows, hips, shoulders, and top of the head. The actor was filmed walking in a darkened room, with only the light points visible, yet people easily identified the pattern as a person walking, even with only 13 light points. When an additional dozen light points were added randomly to the display, moving in the same direction, observers still easily identified the walker, the walker's gender and emotional state, and whether it was a stranger, a friend, or themselves filmed three months earlier. These are remarkable findings.
The author invokes mirror neurons and the motor theory of perception but also admits that perceptual experience has a role in the body-based view of the world. It's not a consistent conclusion.
Another article reviews functional magnetic resonance imaging studies of the human parietal–occipital cortex to establish the existence of a brain representation of “peripersonal space.” Two chapters examine the embodied cognition hypothesis in infants and children. Brian MacWhinney offers a somewhat technical psycholinguistic attempt to replace Chomsky's (disembodied) phrase-structure grammar with one based on situated pragmatics and speech-act theory.
This book will be of interest to anyone working in the field of embodied cognition or allied fields of ecological psychology and situated robotics. Traditionally trained cognitive psychologists should read it to let the embodied cognition movement challenge the default assumption that the brain is a computational device and instead try to view the brain as a control system for the body. The chapters are well written and interesting, but, because they are fairly technical, they are suitable mainly for professionals, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews