Grounded, embodied, and situated theories of cognition

Post date: Oct 20, 2012 9:28:15 AM

Is cognition grounded and embodied?

Grounded theories increasingly challenge traditional views of cognition by proposing that the conceptual representations underlying knowledge are grounded in sensory and motor systems, rather than being represented and processed abstractly in amodal conceptual data structures.

The grounded perspective offers a unifying view of cognition in that it stresses dynamic brain-body-environment interactions and perception-action links as common bases to explain simple behaviours as well as complex cognitive and social skills, without ontological (or representational) separations between these domains (Barsalou, 2008; Glenberg, 2010; Spivey, 2007). This entails that higher cognitive abilities such as categorization, reasoning, numeric and linguistic processing, and theory of mind still retain embodied and sensorimotor aspects, and largely use sensorimotor processes and bodily resources for their execution.

A grounded cognition perspective on how grounded (modal) symbols are firstly formed based on situated interactions with the external environment, and therefore re-enacted as situated simulations that afford higher-level cognitive processing (having the same characteristics and constraints as embodied and situated action). From Pezzulo et al., 2011 [link]

Not only does this view offer an explanation of psychological phenomena, but it also aligns well with current theories in neuroscience that describe the brain as a device that solves the problems of survival, specification and selection of action with simple (in early organisms) to more complex mechanisms (in humans; cf. Cisek and Kalaska, 2010; Shadlen et al., 2008). Furthermore, the debate on the embodied nature of brain and cognition has a substantial impact on many other disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics, the social sciences, and robotics (Clark, 2008; Pfeifer and Bongard 2006; Verschure et al., 2003).

We are conducting a number of studies -conceptual, experimental, computational, and robotic- to further develop grounded views of cognition and to assess their basic hypotheses (Pezzulo et al., 2011; Pezzulo and Calvi, 2011) - see also this project to study sensorimotor and cognitive development in blind children.

Selected refs:

• Pezzulo, G., Donnarumma, F., Iodice, P., Maisto, D., Stoianov, I. (2017) Model-Based Approaches to Active Perception and Control. Entropy 19(6), 266 [link]

• Pezzulo, G., Cisek P. (2016) Navigating the Affordance Landscape: Feedback Control as a Process Model of Behavior and Cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 20 (6), 414-424 [link]

• Pezzulo, G., Barsalou, L., Cangelosi, A., Fischer, M., McRae, K., and Spivey, M. (2011). The mechanics of embodiment: A dialogue on embodiment and computational modeling. Frontiers in Cognition, 2(5):1–21. [link]

• Pezzulo, G. and Calvi, G. (2011). Computational explorations of perceptual symbol system theory. New Ideas in Psychology, 29(3):275–297. [more] [pdf]

Other refs:

• Barsalou, L. (2008) Grounded cognition. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 617-645

• Buzsáki G., Peyrache A., Kubie J. (2015) Emergence of Cognition from Action. Cold Spring Harb Symp Quant Biol. 2015

• Cisek, P. & Kalaska, J. F. (2010) Neural mechanisms for interacting with a world full of action choices. Annu Rev Neurosci, 33, 269-298

• Clark, A. (2008) Supersizing the Mind. Embodiment, Action and Cognitive Extension. Oxford University Press

• Glenberg, A. M. (2010). Embodiment as a unifying perspective for psychology. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 1, 586-596.

• Pfeifer, R. and Bongard, J.C. (2006). How the body shapes the way we think. MIT Press

• Shadlen, M.; Kiani, R.; Hanks, T. & Churchland, A. (2008) Neurobiology of Decision Making: An Intentional Framework. Engel, C. & Singer, W. (Eds.) Better than conscious? decision making, the human mind, and implications for institutions, The MIT Press

• Spivey, M. J. (2007). The Continuity of Mind. New York: Oxford University Press.

• Verschure, P. F. M. J.; Voegtlin, T. & Douglas, R. J. (2003) Environmentally mediated synergy between perception and behaviour in mobile robots. Nature, 425, 620-624