What is embodied cognition ?

A theory of cognition based on embodied cognition, is a theory that assume that cognition and the physical body are embedded and depended upon the other to work. In embodied cognition it is commonly assumed that cognition is developed through physical interaction with the external world (here the internal world is to be considered the mind). This creates several special consideration that should be taken into account, especially when talking about human cognitive development.

Ackerman et al (2010) made a study that showed how tactile information affected the way humans speak and think. In their study they conducted interviews with test subjects, that during the interview had to hold hard or soft objects. The result showed that when holding a hard object your views and the words you were using became harsher. While holding a soft object made a test subject have softer words and views. This shows a clear relation between the physical body and the mind among the test subjects.

The world and words
The theory goes that, when learning words like soft and hard, as well as other abstract harsh or soft words, the human mind must also create an understanding of physical properties such as soft and hard. There is a interaction between the knowledge of the tactile sensation of the physical properties of an object and the abstract word for these tactile feelings. They develop mutually and dependent of the other. 

In Helen Kellers self biography there is a scene where her assistant help her to feel the tactile sensation of water while at the same time writing the word water in Kellers hand. What this does to Keller is creating a new understanding for the word water. 

"Before this experience Helen was able to use symbols, say, to ask for water by spelling out "w-a-t-e-r." In this she was much like the behaviorist's animal or the computer scientist's Turing machine. But it was only with this step via perception into semantics, to understanding that the word meant water, that "the mystery of language" was revealed to her." (Barwise 1989, p. 6)

As we can see, there is a difference between  between knowing a word, and understanding a word. As Ackermans study propose there is a reasonable assumption to believe that humans learn this through physical interaction throughout their childhood and this gives rise to the obvious correlation between what a human is holding in her hand and what her views are.

Knowledge like this can be applied to understanding human development. For instance, how can a child develop without feeling, seeing, smelling, tasting or hearing the world? Can a child learn what a hard object is without ever touching it? What Ackerman studies implies, and most theories based on embodied cognition, is that humans needs to interact with the world in other to develop. It is important for a human to interact with the world in different ways in order to learn about her surroundings. This explains why playing should be considered learning for a child, and why it is important for a child to play in order to learn about its surroundings.

This is of great importance for theories of embodied cognition. The assumption that human cognition exists and develops through a interaction between the mind and body.


References:
Ackerman J.M., Nocera C.C., Bargh J.A. (2010) Incidental Haptic Sensations Influence Social Judgments and Decisions. Science, 328, 1712-1715.
Barwise, Jon. The Situation in Logic. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information, 1989. Print.

Distinction between Short term memory and Attention

Recent research has been able to discover a neurological distinction between short term memory and attention

It has previously been believed that short term memory demanded constant neurological maintenance. As such it was believed that short term memory was a product of constant maintenance of representations, placing short term memory as a product of focus of attention.

Recent research conducted by Lewis-Peacock et. al. (2011) shows that attention and short term memory is neurologically distinct. While the constant neurological activity that maintained focus of attention shifted into representing some other information, short term memory would be retained and was correctly recalled a short period of time afterwards. The study conducted utilized fMRI trace neurological activity during the time which the test subjects conducted one of two tests.

In the first test conducted, the test subjects were to pair different pictures. There were pictures from three categories (faces, places and objects) with six pictures from each category. The pictures were paired into nine pairs, pairing each picture with a picture from another category. During a training the test subjects learned these pairings. Then the actual test began. In the test the test subjects first saw a picture that was to be paired with another picture based on what pairings they had already learned. At the end of the test they saw another picture and their task were to answer yes or no if the two pictures were matching, according to the pairings they had learned. In half of the tests there was a distraction between the two pictures. The distraction was always chosen to not match any of the other categories in the test.

The test subjects were told to use one of two strategies to accomplish their task. There was a prospective and a retrospective strategy. A prospective strategy meant that the test subjected watched at the first picture and retrieved from their long term memory what picture it was paired with then they tried to remember this picture. A retrospective strategy meant that the subjects were meant to keep the first picture they saw in their memory, then when they were prompted to see if the last picture in the test matched the first they used their long term memory finish the task.

The test results showed that when the first picture were presented to the test subjects (target) the brain activity in areas associated to it became more active, this were true for both strategies.

In the top line, where the distraction were absent, we can see that the target picture created activity in the brain. However for the test subjects that used the prospective strategy the target associated brain areas quickly diminished while areas associated to the second picture (associated) increased slightly. When using the prospective strategy the the test subjects where already thinking about the picture when it showed up on the screen and their task were simply to see if it matched. For the retrospective strategy the test subjects task were to remember if it was the correct pair when the second picture showed up.

When the distraction was added to the test is when things starts to get interesting. As can be seen on the graph, brain activity in areas associated to the irrelevant (irrel) category greatly increased after it has been presented to the test subject. While the target and associated categories both diminished to a baseline activity. Even though the test subjects were able to keep it in their short term memory and accomplish their task. This proves that a persistent brain activity in the brain region and therefore any persistent focus on the category, is not essential to complete a short term memory task.

In the second test of the study the researchers wanted to be more precise. The experiment used again three different categories; English words, pronounceable pseudo-words, and line segments. The test subjects task was to respond whether the probe presented to them, yes or no, was synonymous in meaning (in the English words category) if it was rhyming (for pseudo-words category) or of the lines matched (for line segments category). At the beginning of the test they were presented by two stimuli, from two different categories, on a computer screen. Then after a short period of a blank screen, they received a clue to which of the two categories that were relevant for their response. Shortly afterwards a new stimuli were presented to them and the test subjects were to response if the word or line segment were correct, according to the rules explained earlier. Then the clue and and response session were repeated. In 50% of the tests the second clue and response was of the same category as the first (this was called a repeat), while in the other 50% it was of the second category that was presented earlier (this was called a switch).

The red and blue colors represent the two relevant categories presented at 

the beginning of each test. The red triangle represents the clue received for

the red category. The blue triangle represents the clue for the blue category.

The squares represents the where the test subjects were probed and asked

to answer. Grey represents the category that was not present at each test. 

The result of the test shows that in the both the repeat and the switch tests the neurological patterns associated to the irrelevant stimuli remained at a baseline activity. In the both tests the second stimuli (the one that was not asked for in the repeat test, and the second category that was asked for in the switch test) quickly dropped to a baseline activity. But in the Switch test that test subjects still succeeded to recall and remember the second stimuli.

This study proves to us that short term memory is not something that is created through a constant neurological activity. It also proves to us that there is a discrete distinction between attention and short term memory. This is because focus on a specific category or stimuli demands neurological activity, while short term memory works regardless of this. Although we know that short term memory is entangled with attention and as such attention and short term memory are two phenomenons that affects each one another. This study also creates a understanding of the nature of short term memory and how we should understand it.

As Lewis-Peacock et. al. describes short term memory can describe as an emergent property of the interaction between long term memory and attention. This study gives support for that theory commonly described as "embedded component" theory.


Reference:
Lewis-Peacock J. A., Drysdale A. T.,  Oberauer K.,  Postle B. R., (2011). Neural Evidence for a Distinction between Short-term Memory and the Focus of Attention. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 24:1, pp. 61–79.