Embodied Cognition

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila L. Macrine ◽  
Jennifer M.B. Fugate
Keyword(s):  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
Mixed Reality ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Educational Practice ◽  
The Body ◽  
Learning Approaches ◽  
Embodied Learning ◽  
Brain Functions ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Motor Actions

Embodied cognition theories are different from traditional theories of cognition in that they specifically focus on the mind–body connection. This shift in our understanding of how knowledge is acquired challenges Cartesian, as well as computational theories of cognition that emphasize the body as a “passive” observer to brain functions, and necessary only in the execution of motor actions. Historically, mental representations within the brain were typically considered abstractions of the original information (i.e., mental representations). Accordingly, these amodal (disembodied) theories provided the knowledge used in cognitive processes, but did not reflect the original sensorimotor states themselves. In contrast, Embodied cognition provides a starting point to advance our understanding of how perceptual, sensorimotor and multisensory approaches facilitate and encourage learning throughout the lifespan. Derived from embodied cognition, embodied learning constitutes a contemporary pedagogical theory of knowing and learning that emphasizes the use of the body in educational practice. Embodied learning approaches scientifically endorse and advance sensorimotor learning, as well as offer potentially useful tools for educators. This article begins with a discussion on the historical progression of embodied understanding in the disciplines of philosophy, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience, with a focus on how embodied cognition differs from traditional models of cognition. Empirical evidence from varied field domains (e.g., reading, handwriting, STEM fields, haptic technology, mixed reality, and special education) are presented that show how embodied learning increases and facilitates learning and memory. Discussions within each content area draw upon embodied principles and show why the reviewed techniques facilitate learning. Also discussed are examples on how these principles can be further integrated into educational curriculum, with an eye toward the learner as a unified whole.

scholarly journals Translating Embodied Cognition for Embodied Learning in the Classroom

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila L. Macrine ◽  
Jennifer M. B. Fugate
Keyword(s):  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
Mixed Reality ◽  
The Body ◽  
Research Model ◽  
Embodied Learning ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Extensive Training ◽  
Early Schooling ◽  
Step Step ◽  
Learning Principles

In this perspective piece, we briefly review embodied cognition and embodied learning. We then present a translational research model based on this research to inform teachers, educational psychologists, and practitioners on the benefits of embodied cognition and embodied learning for classroom applications. While many teachers already employ the body in teaching, especially in early schooling, many teachers’ understandings of the science and benefits of sensorimotor engagement or embodied cognition across grades levels and the content areas is little understood. Here, we outline seven goals in our model and four major “action” steps. To address steps 1 and 2, we recap previously published reviews of the experimental evidence of embodied cognition (and embodied learning) research across multiple learning fields, with a focus on how both simple embodied learning activities—as well as those based on more sophisticated technologies of AR, VR, and mixed reality—are being vetted in the classroom. Step 3 of our model outlines how researchers, teachers, policy makers, and designers can work together to help translate this knowledge in support of these goals. In the final step (step 4), we extract generalized, practical embodied learning principles, which can be easily adopted by teachers in the classroom without extensive training. We end with a call for educators and policy makers to use these principles to identify learning objectives and outcomes, as well as track outcomes to assess whether program objectives and competency requirements are met.

scholarly journals A Growing Body of Knowledge

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Kersting ◽  
Jesper Haglund ◽  
Rolf Steier
Keyword(s):  
Science Education ◽  
Education Research ◽  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
Science Learning ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
The Body ◽  
Science Education Research ◽  
Learning Approaches ◽  
Comprehensive Overview ◽  
Education Practice

AbstractScience deals with the world around us, and we understand, experience, and study this world through and with our bodies. While science educators have started to acknowledge the critical role of the body in science learning, approaches to conceptualising the body in science education vary greatly. Embodiment and embodied cognition serve as umbrella terms for different approaches to bodily learning processes. Unfortunately, researchers and educators often blur these different approaches and use various claims of embodiment interchangeably. Understanding and acknowledging the diversity of embodied perspectives strengthen arguments in science education research and allows realising the potential of embodied cognition in science education practice. We need a comprehensive overview of the various ways the body bears on science learning. With this paper, we wish to present such an overview by disentangling key ideas of embodiment and embodied cognition with a view towards science education. Drawing on the historical traditions of phenomenology and ecological psychology, we propose four senses of embodiment that conceptualise the body in physical, phenomenological, ecological, and interactionist terms. By illustrating the multiple senses of embodiment through examples from the recent science education literature, we show that embodied cognition bears on practical educational problems and has a variety of theoretical implications for science education. We hope that future work can recognise such different senses of embodiment and show how they might work together to strengthen the many roles of the body in science education research and practice.

De la cognition incarnée au corps cognitivisé

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (2 supplement) ◽  
pp. 15-24
Author(s):  
Patricia Apostol
Keyword(s):  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
Cognitive Activity ◽  
The Body ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
Construction Of Meaning ◽  
Meaning Creation ◽  
Sensitive Line ◽  
The Subject

"From Embodied Cognition to the Cognitivised Body. The construction of meaning, before being a linguistic or neuronal phenomenon, is a sensitive phenomenon, indebted to the bodily experience of the world, the lived body. Varela’s neurophenomenological approach, which is inspired by the intertwining of the subject and the world as proposed by Merleau-Ponty, can only take in charge an ordinary production of meaning. What about when one produces a concept or a work of art? In other words, how does the body-mind relationship function in the act of creation? If the construction of meaning starts from the subject, in the sense that it is the subject who by his embodied cognitive activity produces meaning, the construction of a concept or a work of art solicits a super-personal force that engenders the subject himself: a heccéité, in the sense of Deleuze. What does this engendering of the subject mean and how does it intervene in the act of creation? In other words, why must the subject be somehow “recreated” in order to create? It is only when thought is destabilized by a point of crisis that it becomes a creative device that plays out between the chaotic intensities from which it tears itself away and the composition of a consistency. The starting point of the creative thought is the stopping of the thought and its continuation on another plane: a thought that leaves the field of cognition and recognition and derails, carried away by a sensitive line of flight, produced in the body, towards the inorganic and impersonal plane of a super-personal power. With the act of creation, the embodied cognition swings towards a de-subjectivation: the cognition becomes then a “chaognition”, an impersonal faculty mobilizing the power of passivity. Keywords: cognition, embodiment, subject, meaning, creation, heccéité, de-subjectivation. "

Revaluations through Dance: Friedrich Nietzsche's Thought in Isadora Duncan's Speech The Dance of the Future

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-219
Author(s):  
Meindert E. Peters
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Eternal Recurrence ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Mind

Friedrich Nietzsche's influence on Isadora Duncan's work, in particular his idea of the Dionysian, has been widely discussed, especially in regard to her later work. What has been left underdeveloped in critical examinations of her work, however, is his influence on her earlier choreographic work, which she defended in a famous speech held in 1903 called The Dance of the Future. While commentators often describe this speech as ‘Nietzschean’, Duncan's autobiography suggests that she only studied Nietzsche's work after this speech. I take this incongruity as a starting point to explore the connections between her speech and Nietzsche's work, in particular his Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I argue that in subject and language Duncan's speech resembles Nietzsche's in important ways. This article will draw attention to the ways in which Duncan takes her cues from Nietzsche in bringing together seemingly conflicting ideas of religion and an overturning of morality; Nietzsche's notion of eternal recurrence and the teleology present in his idea of the Übermensch; and a renegotiation of the body's relation to the mind. In doing so, this article contributes not only to scholarship on Duncan's early work but also to discussions of Nietzsche's reception in the early twentieth century. Moreover, the importance Duncan ascribes to the body in dance and expression also asks for a new understanding of Nietzsche's own way of expressing his philosophy.

TEORI KECERDASAN, PENDIDIKAN ANAK, DAN KOMUNIKASI DALAM KELUARGA

1970 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Muskinul Fuad
Keyword(s):  
Multiple Intelligences ◽  
Educational Activity ◽  
Howard Gardner ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Brain Functions ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Family ◽  
Education Today ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Spatial Logics

The education system in Indonesia emphasize on academic intelligence, whichincludes only two or three aspects, more than on the other aspects of intelligence. For thatreason, many children who are not good at academic intelligence, but have good potentials inother aspects of intelligence, do not develop optimally. They are often considered and labeledas "stupid children" by the existing system. This phenomenon is on the contrary to the theoryof multiple intelligences proposed by Howard Gardner, who argues that intelligence is theability to solve various problems in life and produce products or services that are useful invarious aspects of life.Human intelligence is a combination of various general and specific abilities. Thistheory is different from the concept of IQ (intelligence quotient) that involves only languageskills, mathematical, and spatial logics. According to Gardner, there are nine aspects ofintelligence and its potential indicators to be developed by each child born without a braindefect. What Gardner suggested can be considered as a starting point to a perspective thatevery child has a unique individual intelligence. Parents have to treat and educate theirchildren proportionally and equitably. This treatment will lead to a pattern of education that isfriendly to the brain and to the plurality of children’s potential.More than the above points, the notion that multiple intelligences do not just comefrom the brain needs to be followed. Humans actually have different immaterial (spiritual)aspects that do not refer to brain functions. The belief in spiritual aspects and its potentialsmeans that human beings have various capacities and they differ from physical capacities.This is what needs to be addressed from the perspective of education today. The philosophyand perspective on education of the educators, education stakeholders, and especially parents,are the first major issue to be addressed. With this step, every educational activity andcommunication within the family is expected to develop every aspect of children'sintelligence, especially the spiritual intelligence.

scholarly journals The Dimension of the Body in Higher Education: Matrix of Meanings in Students’ Diaries

Human Arenas ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramiro Tau ◽  
Laure Kloetzer ◽  
Simon Henein
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Educational Practice ◽  
The Body ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
General Process ◽  
Emotional Dimension ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
The Mind

AbstractIn this paper, we attempt to show some consequences of bringing the body back into higher education, through the use of performing arts in the curricular context of scientific programs. We start by arguing that dominant traditions in higher education reproduced the mind-body dualism that shaped the social matrix of meanings on knowledge transmission. We highlight the limits of the modern disembodied and decontextualized reason and suggest that, considering the students’ and teachers’ bodies as non-relevant aspects, or even obstacles, leads to the invisibilization of fundamental aspects involved in teaching and learning processes. We thus conducted a study, from a socio-cultural perspective, in which we analyse the emerging matrix of meanings given to the body and bodily engagement by students, through a systematic qualitative analysis of 47 personal diaries. We structured the results and the discussion around five interpretative axes: (1) the production of diaries enables historicization, while the richness of bodily experience expands the boundaries of diaries into non-textual modalities; (2) curricular context modulates the emergent meanings of the body; (3) physical and symbolic spaces guide the matrix of bodily meanings; (4) the bodily dimension of the courses facilitates the emergence of an emotional dimension to get in touch with others and to register one's own emotional experiences; and (5) the body functions as a condition for biographical continuity. These axes are discussed under the light of the general process of consciousness-raising and resignification of the situated body in the educational practice.

scholarly journals PhaLP: A Database for the Study of Phage Lytic Proteins and Their Evolution

Viruses ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 1240
Author(s):  
Bjorn Criel ◽  
Steff Taelman ◽  
Wim Van Criekinge ◽  
Michiel Stock ◽  
Yves Briers
Keyword(s):  
Protein Sequence ◽  
Early Research ◽  
Learning Approaches ◽  
Specific Design ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Community Of Researchers ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Rich Content ◽  
Broad Community ◽  
High Diversity

Phage lytic proteins are a clinically advanced class of novel enzyme-based antibiotics, so-called enzybiotics. A growing community of researchers develops phage lytic proteins with the perspective of their use as enzybiotics. A successful translation of enzybiotics to the market requires well-considered selections of phage lytic proteins in early research stages. Here, we introduce PhaLP, a database of phage lytic proteins, which serves as an open portal to facilitate the development of phage lytic proteins. PhaLP is a comprehensive, easily accessible and automatically updated database (currently 16,095 entries). Capitalizing on the rich content of PhaLP, we have mapped the high diversity of natural phage lytic proteins and conducted analyses at three levels to gain insight in their host-specific evolution. First, we provide an overview of the modular diversity. Secondly, datamining and interpretable machine learning approaches were adopted to reveal host-specific design rules for domain architectures in endolysins. Lastly, the evolution of phage lytic proteins on the protein sequence level was explored, revealing host-specific clusters. In sum, PhaLP can act as a starting point for the broad community of enzybiotic researchers, while the steadily improving evolutionary insights will serve as a natural inspiration for protein engineers.

scholarly journals Reinforcement Learning Approaches in Social Robotics

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 1292
Author(s):  
Neziha Akalin ◽  
Amy Loutfi
Keyword(s):  
Reinforcement Learning ◽  
Real World ◽  
Social Robotics ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Social Robots ◽  
Learning Approaches ◽  
Reward Function ◽  
Optimal Behavior ◽  
Learning Challenges ◽  
Starting Point

This article surveys reinforcement learning approaches in social robotics. Reinforcement learning is a framework for decision-making problems in which an agent interacts through trial-and-error with its environment to discover an optimal behavior. Since interaction is a key component in both reinforcement learning and social robotics, it can be a well-suited approach for real-world interactions with physically embodied social robots. The scope of the paper is focused particularly on studies that include social physical robots and real-world human-robot interactions with users. We present a thorough analysis of reinforcement learning approaches in social robotics. In addition to a survey, we categorize existent reinforcement learning approaches based on the used method and the design of the reward mechanisms. Moreover, since communication capability is a prominent feature of social robots, we discuss and group the papers based on the communication medium used for reward formulation. Considering the importance of designing the reward function, we also provide a categorization of the papers based on the nature of the reward. This categorization includes three major themes: interactive reinforcement learning, intrinsically motivated methods, and task performance-driven methods. The benefits and challenges of reinforcement learning in social robotics, evaluation methods of the papers regarding whether or not they use subjective and algorithmic measures, a discussion in the view of real-world reinforcement learning challenges and proposed solutions, the points that remain to be explored, including the approaches that have thus far received less attention is also given in the paper. Thus, this paper aims to become a starting point for researchers interested in using and applying reinforcement learning methods in this particular research field.

scholarly journals Scalable co-optimization of morphology and control in embodied machines

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (143) ◽  
pp. 20170937 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Cheney ◽  
Josh Bongard ◽  
Vytas SunSpiral ◽  
Hod Lipson
Keyword(s):  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
Initial Conditions ◽  
Control Policy ◽  
Sensorimotor Control ◽  
Body Plan ◽  
The Body ◽  
Test Bed ◽  
Local Optima ◽  
Close Coupling ◽  
And Control

Evolution sculpts both the body plans and nervous systems of agents together over time. By contrast, in artificial intelligence and robotics, a robot's body plan is usually designed by hand, and control policies are then optimized for that fixed design. The task of simultaneously co-optimizing the morphology and controller of an embodied robot has remained a challenge. In psychology, the theory of embodied cognition posits that behaviour arises from a close coupling between body plan and sensorimotor control, which suggests why co-optimizing these two subsystems is so difficult: most evolutionary changes to morphology tend to adversely impact sensorimotor control, leading to an overall decrease in behavioural performance. Here, we further examine this hypothesis and demonstrate a technique for ‘morphological innovation protection’, which temporarily reduces selection pressure on recently morphologically changed individuals, thus enabling evolution some time to ‘readapt’ to the new morphology with subsequent control policy mutations. We show the potential for this method to avoid local optima and converge to similar highly fit morphologies across widely varying initial conditions, while sustaining fitness improvements further into optimization. While this technique is admittedly only the first of many steps that must be taken to achieve scalable optimization of embodied machines, we hope that theoretical insight into the cause of evolutionary stagnation in current methods will help to enable the automation of robot design and behavioural training—while simultaneously providing a test bed to investigate the theory of embodied cognition.

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