science, cognition and technology cognition in context: evidence on affordances and verbal ...

354 Pages·2014·3.31 MB·English

AAllmmaa MMaatteerr SSttuuddiioorruumm –– UUnniivveerrssiittàà ddii BBoollooggnnaa

DOTTORATO DI RICERCA IN

SCIENCE, COGNITION AND TECHNOLOGY

Ciclo XXVI

Settore Concorsuale di afferenza: 11/ E1

Settore Scientifico disciplinare: M-PSI/01

COGNITION IN CONTEXT: EVIDENCE ON
AFFORDANCES AND VERBAL LANGUAGE

Presentata da: Andrea Flumini

Coordinatore Dottorato Relatore

Prof. Giuliano Pancaldi Prof.ssa Anna M. Borghi

Esame finale anno 2014
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To my family
with all my love
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INDEX

Introduction 10
Keywords 24
Notes 25

PART I - Theoretical framework and literature review

1. Embodied and grounded view of cognition
1.1. Classic cognitive science view of cognition 27
1.2. Embodied and grounded view of cognition and concepts 31
1.3. Simulation and situatedness: no context, no cognition 34
1.4. Neural substrate of embodied simulation 37

2. The affordance effect
2.1. The origins of the notion of affordance 42
2.2. Contemporary perspectives on affordances 47
2.3. Behavioural evidence on affordances 55
2.4. Neuroscientific evidence on affordances 59
2.5. Manipulative and functional affordances 63
2.6. Mirror mechanism in motor resonance 67

3. Language and embodiment
3.1. Embodied and grounded view of language 73
3.2. Behavioural evidence of embodied simulation during word and

sentence comprehension 76
3.3. Neuroscientific evidence of motor resonance during word and

sentence comprehension 90
3.4. Objects/actions processing and language comprehension: are

there identical simulations? 99
3.5. Abstract concepts in embodied language 105
3.6. Embodiment and the evolution of language 117

PART II – Experimental work

4. Affordance-based compatibility effects in different contexts
4.1. Introduction 129
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4.2. Experiment 1 136
4.2.1. Method 136
4.2.2. Results 140
4.2.3. Discussion 142
4.3. Experiment 2 143
4.3.1. Method 143
4.3.2. Results 144
4.3.3. Discussion 146
4.4. Comparison between the two experiments 147
4.5. General discussion 148

5. Semantic categorization of conflict objects in different contexts
5.1. Introduction 159
5.2. Method 161
5.2.1. Participants 161
5.2.2. Materials and procedure 161
5.2.3. Baseline experiment 163
5.2.4. Main experiment 164
5.2.5. Data Analysis and results 166
5.3. Discussion 168

6. Activation of affordances by visual objects and their names
6.1. Introduction 175
6.2. Experiment 1 179
6.2.1. Method 179
6.2.2. Results 183
6.2.3. Discussion 188
6.3. Experiment 2 189
6.3.1. Method 189
6.3.2. Results 190
6.3.3. Discussion 194
6.4. General discussion 196

7. Simulating concrete and abstract words acquisition
7.1. Introduction 200
7.2. Experiment 1 207
7.2.1. Method 207
7.2.2. Results 214
7.2.3. Discussion 217
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7.3. Experiment 2 217
7.3.1. Method 218
7.3.2. Results 219
7.3.3. Discussion 224
7.4. Experiment 3 225
7.4.1. Method 226
7.4.2. Results 226
7.4.3. Discussion 229
7.5. Experiment 4 230
7.5.1. Method 231
7.5.2. Results 232
7.5.3. Discussion 236
7.6. General discussion 237

8. The activation of the left-right mental timeline is context-dependent
8.1. Introduction 243
8.2. Experiment 1 247
8.2.1. Method 247
8.2.2. Results 250
8.2.3. Discussion 253
8.3. Experiment 2 254
8.3.1. Method 256
8.3.2. Results 258
8.3.3. Discussion 263
8.4. General discussion 264

9. Evidence of sound-symbolism with every-day objects figures
9.1. Introduction 269
9.2. Experiment 1 276
9.2.1. Method 276
9.2.2. Results 280
9.2.3. Discussion 282
9.3. Experiment 2 283
9.3.1. Method 284
9.3.2. Results 287
9.3.3. Discussion 293
9.4. General discussion 295

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General conclusions 301

References 315

Appendix 347

Acknowledgements 354
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INTRODUCTION

In the following pages, I would like to give an overview of my doctoral thesis, presenting
briefly the issues treated in each chapter. The first part of the thesis is composed of three
chapters of theoretical and empirical introduction, with an extended review of the literature
relevant for my experimental investigation. The second part is composed by seven chapters in
which is reported the original research that I performed during the past three years. This
research is aimed at demonstrating the high flexibility and contextuality of embodied and
situated simulation processes.
Chapter 1 outlines at a very general level the theoretical context in which my empirical
work on human cognition has been developed. First of all, I give a brief outline of the
propositional theory (e.g., Fodor, 1975; Marr, 1982), which has been the dominant view in
cognitive science in the last decades. Then, the contrasting perspective brought in cognitive
science by embodied and grounded cognition theories is outlined. In this view, the
meaningfulness of our psychological representations depends on the ability of the human
body for sensing the world and acting in it (e.g., Barsalou, 1999; Gallese & Lakoff, 2005;
Gallese, 2008; Gibbs, 2006; Glenberg, 1997; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999; Zwaan, 2004). As this
approach strongly emphasizes the relation between knowledge and action, the reciprocity of
the subjects and the environment where they are embedded is assumed as the basic structure
that sustain the very same possibility of any human behavior, including cognition: this mutual
relation is what embodiment calls situatedness (e.g., Barsalou, 2009). According to the
embodied view, activations and re-activations by situated simulation in the brain systems are
considered the basis of any cognitive process (Shapiro, 2010). Mental simulation is always
characterized by situatedness itself, as it puts again the subject with his/her first-person
perspective in the same context in which those experience were initially produced. After
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