Grounding Cognition: The Role of Perception and Action in Memory, Language, and Thinking

One of the key questions in cognitive psychology is how people represent knowledge about concepts such as football or love. Recently some researchers have proposed that concepts are represented in human memory by the sensorimotor systems that underlie interaction with the outside world. These theories represent a recent development in cognitive science to view cognition no longer in terms of abstract information processing, but in terms of perception and action. In other words, cognition is grounded in embodied experiences. Studies show that sensory perception and motor actions support understanding of words and object concepts. Moreover, even understanding of abstract and emotion concepts can be shown to rely on more concrete, embodied experiences. Finally, language itself can be shown to be grounded in sensorimotor processes. This book brings together theoretical arguments and empirical evidence from several key researchers in this field to support this framework.


• Embodied cognition
• Sensorimotor basis of conceptual representations
• Sensorimotor basis of language comprehension

Contents
1. Introduction to grounding cognition: the role of perception and action in memory, language, and thinking Diane Pecher and Rolf A. Zwaan; 2. Object concepts and action Anna M. Borghi; 3. Constraints on spatial language comprehension: function and geometry Laura A. Carlson and Ryan Kenny; 4. Embodiment in metaphorical imagination Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr.; 5. Passionate thoughts: the emotional embodiment of moral concepts Jesse J. Prinz; 6. Grounding language in bodily states: the case for emotion Arthur M. Glenberg, David Havas, Raymond Becker and Mike Rinck; 7. Situating abstract concepts Lawrence W. Barsalou and Katja Wiemer-Hastings; 8. Dynamicity, fictivity, and scanning: the imaginative basis of logic and linguistic meaning Ronald W. Langacker; 9. The emergence of grammar from perspective Brian MacWhinney; 10. Embodied sentence comprehension Rolf A. Zwaan and Carol J. Madden; 11. On the perceptual-motor and image-schematic infrastructure of language Michael J. Spivey, Daniel C. Richardson and Monica Gonzalez-Marquez; 12. Connecting concepts to each other and the world Robert L. Goldstone, Ying Feng and Brian J. Rogosky.

Contributors
Diane Pecher, Rolf A. Zwaan, Anna M. Borghi, Laura A. Carlson, Ryan Kenny, Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr., Jesse J. Prinz, Arthur M. Glenberg, David Havas, Raymond Becker, Mike Rinck, Lawrence W. Barsalou, Katja Wiemer-Hastings, Ronald W. Langacker, Brian MacWhinney, Carol J. Madden, Michael J. Spivey, Daniel C. Richardson, Monica Gonzalez-Marquez, Robert L. Goldstone, Ying Feng, Brian J. Rogosky