Embodied Cognition

This paper pursues a phenomenological investigation of the nature of absorbed listening in Western, classical music concert audiences. This investigation is based on a data-set of 16 in-depth phenomenological interviews with audience members from three classical concerts with the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra and the Norwegian Radio Orchestra conducted in spring 2024. We identify seven major themes, namely "sharedness", "attention", "spontaneous thought/mental imagery", "modes of listening" "absorption", "distraction", and "strong emotional experiences", and interpret these in light of relevant ideas in phenomenology, cognitive psychology, and ecological aesthetics, more precisely "passive synthesis" from Husserl, the "sense of agency" from Gallagher, and "mind surfing" from Høffding, Nielsen, and Laeng. We show that, like absorbed musical performance, absorbed musical listening comes in many shapes and can be grasped as instantiating variations of passive synthesis, the sense of agency, and mind surfing. We conclude that absorbed listening circles around a kind of paradox of passivity, characterised by a sense of loss of egoic control arising from particular forms of invested, intensive perceptual, cognitive, and affective engagement.

This essay examines audio-visual art as a real-time interface where sound and image co-constitute each other through algorithmic processing, creating an immersive, non-representational experience. Analyzing its technical foundations (high-speed computing, parametric systems) and historical precedents (Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk, Russian Constructivist factura), the text positions audio-visual works within McLuhan’s framework of "cool media"—demanding intuitive engagement over narrative interpretation. The discussion extends to contemporary contexts: rave culture’s ritualistic trance and gallery-based "conceptronica" deconstruct club aesthetics into pure digital factura, where technology exhibits its own production processes. Ultimately, the essay argues that audio-visual art’s hallucinatory power lies in its capacity to forge sites of sensory fusion, offering an antidote to the disembodied virtuality of post-truth digitality.

Keywords: audio-visual art, real-time processing, factura, cool media, immersion, non-representational, digital consciousness

In this chapter, it is argued that the scope of simulation pedagogy can be extended beyond the medical health field with the development of actor agents on virtual stages. The literature on animated pedagogical agents is reviewed with a focus on embodied intelligence, and in particular, conversational ability. The embedded intelligence of virtual worlds is also reviewed, including the deployment of computer controlled avatars. The next section presents a review of work involving actor agents in Second Life including the authors’ research. A few of the major challenges are described and a conclusion is presented regarding the opportunities afforded by actor agents and virtual stages.

ADHD is, I argue, an impairment in sense of time and a matter of difference in rhythm; it can be understood as a certain being in the world, or more specifically, as a disruption in the experience of time and a state of desynchronization and arrhythmia. Through excerpts of interviews with adults diagnosed with ADHD and observations, I illustrate how impairment in time is manifested in an embodied experience of being out of sync. I suggest that the experience of ADHD is characterized as 1) an inner restlessness and bodily arrhythmia; 2) an intersubjective desynchronization between the individual and its surroundings; and 3) a feeling of lagging behind socially due to difficulties in social skills. In closing, I argue that an increasingly accelerating society is augmenting the experience of being out of sync rather than eliminating it.

This paper is an exploration of the modernist project of museums' construction of "reality" through the processes of the collecting and displaying of objects, as practiced in the Ethnographic Museum Belgrade. Through the analysis of the museum's collecting and exhibiting practices, I will try to argue that in Belgrade ethnographic museum practice the idea of the nation is closely connected with the idea of ethnicity as a bounded whole of the distinctive characteristics embodied in the traditional culture that the museum collects and displays.

Aggressive, sexist humor is often understood as expressions of inner, misogynist attitudes. This article, however, investigates rape humor as a collective and interactive phenomenon. Drawing on an infamous Swedish podcast episode, we illuminate rape humor in terms of affect, desire, and repression (Butler 1987; Billig 1999), and as such, how taboo-breaking arouses both pleasure and fear among the participants. The analyses detail affective practices that both promote and discipline affects. The men in the group interpellate one of the participants as a clown, someone whose taboo-breaking they interactionally support and simultaneously distance themselves from. The article concludes that affects, like subject positions, are interpellated in interaction. Building on Wetherell's (2013) understanding of affect as both discursive and embodied, we suggest a reintroduction of repression/desire into a discursively oriented framework. (Affective practices, rape humor, desire, repression,...

While there is a proliferation of numerical data in healthcare, little attention has been paid to the role of numbers in constituting the healthcare reality they are intended to depict. This study explores the performativity of numbers in the microlevel management of rheumatoid disease. We draw on a study of patients' and physicians' use of the numbers in the Swedish Rheumatology Quality Registry, conducted between 2009-2014. We show how the numbers performed by constructing the disease across time, and by framing action. The numerical performances influenced patients and physicians in different ways, challenging the former to quantify embodied disease and the latter to subsume the disease into one of many possible trajectory standards. Based on our findings, we provide a model of the dynamic performativity of numbers in the on-going management of illness. The model conceptualises how numbers generate new possibilities; by creating tension and alignment they may open up new avenues for communication between patients and physicians.

While there is a proliferation of numerical data in healthcare, little attention has been paid to the role of numbers in constituting the healthcare reality they are intended to depict. This study explores the performativity of numbers in the microlevel management of rheumatoid disease. We draw on a study of patients' and physicians' use of the numbers in the Swedish Rheumatology Quality Registry, conducted between 2009-2014. We show how the numbers performed by constructing the disease across time, and by framing action. The numerical performances influenced patients and physicians in different ways, challenging the former to quantify embodied disease and the latter to subsume the disease into one of many possible trajectory standards. Based on our findings, we provide a model of the dynamic performativity of numbers in the on-going management of illness. The model conceptualises how numbers generate new possibilities; by creating tension and alignment they may open up new avenues for communication between patients and physicians.

Quante sono le note?
Da piccoli ci hanno insegnato che le note sono 7 ed hanno un nome (DO, RE, MI, FA, SOL, LA e SI), ma ci sono altre 5 note, chiamate accidenti o alterazioni, che non hanno nome proprio.
Viene qui estesa la denominazione delle note a tutte e 12 le note che compongono il sistema musicale europeo (temperamento equabile).
Si utilizzano dei fonemi composti da una consonante e una vocale a partire dalle note già codificate per estendere la fonetica alle cinque note mancanti.
Con questo metodo viene data priorità alla scala cromatica simmetrica composta dalle 12 note, mentre il sistema diatonico delle scale di sette note asimmetriche, scende di priorità mantenendo un ruolo importante ma non gerarchicamente superiore alla scala cromatica.

In the Islamic tradition, there have been differences in method among İslamic schools in understanding religious texts. These differences in approach also emerge in the perceptions of God, the central element of Islamic theology. The main problem with God is based on the fiction that He is different from the created universe. When God, as a theological acceptance, is different from the world, the theological discourse difficulties caused by the difficulties of perception about Him have also been the source of inevitable discourses and claims among the schools. In this study, with the assumption that the bilâ kayfa approach, which is emphasized as a method Ahl al-Hadîth's effort to understand religious texts is a product of the effort to glorify and sanctify Allâh. It has also been tried to determine what this religious approach, which is used extensively by Riwâya schools, means theologically, and whether this school differs from its counterparts in using this method. Another subject included in the study is to determine whether there is a difference between the Ra'y and Riwâya theological schools in terms of using this religious approach. In addition, the theological reasons that reveal the arbitrary approach are also tried to be determined within the framework of our study. This study claims that arbitrariness, which is presented as a theological discourse, expresses a theological silence, therefore, it is an attitude of refuge due to the theological deadlock. As a theological attitude, it assumes that arbitrariness, which is highly respected in the Islamic tradition, is a huge void as a theological discourse, therefore it has no meaning. However, this helplessness is not a weakness caused by the inadequacy of scholars, but a human helplessness resulting from the inability to perceive Allâh due to his different qualities from the universe. Therefore, the theological stance in question is assumed to be the theological silence caused by God's difference from the universe exceeding human potential.

As a young music graduate with a fresh performer’s degree (DiplA´me d’Etudes Musicales) in hand from a French conservatoire, I often replaced conservatoire teachers in the Parisian suburbs. On one occasion, I was asked to substitute for a recorder teacher who was suffering from severe health issues for a couple of months. I was required to teach several young students who were preparing for their end of year exams. The music teacher gave me instructions as to which pieces they were working on and what to expect from the students. One of them, she told me, was completely hopeless: after three or four years of study he could still not read music, he would play about two notes and then get stuck. She had no hopes regarding his exam performance. Â

As a young music graduate with a fresh performer’s degree (DiplA´me d’Etudes Musicales) in hand from a French conservatoire, I often replaced conservatoire teachers in the Parisian suburbs. On one occasion, I was asked to substitute for a recorder teacher who was suffering from severe health issues for a couple of months. I was required to teach several young students who were preparing for their end of year exams. The music teacher gave me instructions as to which pieces they were working on and what to expect from the students. One of them, she told me, was completely hopeless: after three or four years of study he could still not read music, he would play about two notes and then get stuck. She had no hopes regarding his exam performance. Â

The 1-D geometric model studies the structure of paradox found in states containing only self-reference for their property. The mechanism of absolute closure is the logical "not" function. Two correlated fundamental reference frames and the boundary that applies are identified. In the first framework, the discrete identification of the state's internal structure is prohibited from enumeration within its boundary. In the second, two segments share property for the same infinity but are excluded from common membership across the boundary that divides them. The geometric model is applied to analyze the role of the "not" function in linguistics, mathematics, physics, and the generic structure of emergence. Logical formalisms necessarily discount paradoxes as anomalies open to more advanced understanding, worked around by restrictions to logic or ignored as nonsensical. The 1-D geometric model takes an opposing analysis perspective, considering paradox a fundamental mechanism. The geometric proof examines two paradoxical constructions of the right triangle within the unit circle. Although the two formats are paradoxical, with the second having no rational basis, the cosine squared calculations agree. The study concludes that two paradoxical frameworks cohabit within a universal state, and the paradox mechanism is validated as the basis of the relationship between them.

Katsaus käsittelee keppihevosiin liittyvän leikin liikunnallistumista ja (media)urheilullistumista. Peilaan digitalisaation vaikutuksia keppihevosten ympärille kehittyneeseen nykyleikkiin, harrastajiksi tunnustautuviin leikkijöihin ja urheilullistuvaan leikkikulttuuriin keppariharrastajien tuottamien sosiaalisen median sisältöjen ja aiheesta julkaistun verkkovälitteisen uutisoinnin kautta. Tarkastelun keskiössä on liikuttava leikki; lasten ja nuorten keppihevostoimintaan liittämät fyysisyyden, funktionaalisuuden, fiktionaalisuuden ja affektiivisuuden merkitykset. Totean, että alakulttuurinen ja leikkijälähtöinen toiminta synnyttää kilpaurheiluksi järjestäytyessään ympärilleen omaleimaisen yhteisön, joka vikuroi tarvittaessa vallitsevaa kilpaurheiluhegemoniaa vastaan. töskirjassaan hevosen asemaa eri kategorioiden välisenä hybridinä (Schuurman 2012, 51). Keppihevosia eli keppareita on niin ikään mahdollista käsitellä hybrideinä, joissa niiden (media)urheilullistuvassa muutoksessa olevaa luonnetta voidaan ymmärtää niin esineiden, kulttuurituotteiden, eläinsuhteen ilmen-tymien kuin hyöty-ja viihdekäytönkin näkökulmista.

Sensemaking has recently been identified as a driver of society developments, in particular in the context of designing a reasonable, valuable, and fair life. Since the construction of meaning is a crucial momentum in sensemaking processes, the authors investigate how meaning can be constructed in a sustaining form by utilizing digital means of expression, articulation, sharing of information, and creation of artscience artefacts. The authors report on results of exploring cyber-physicalsystems with performative methodologies in the context of sensemaking to identify sensemaking processes of entering digital environments and share meaning-making activities through interaction. The collected data from two artscience studies reveal that activities beyond cognition facilitate sensemaking. Aesthetics and embodiment in performing actions are understood to play a role in sensemaking and subsequently effect on the construction of meaning. To investigate the role of the body and aesthetics in sensemaking in digital environments, we were particularly interested in sensemaking through embodied agency and aesthetic awareness, drawing from kinesthetic awareness of performance artists. In the performative activities digital behavior recognition and human task behavior were coupled, on the one hand by performers exploring digital environments actively reflecting on their performative process, on the other hand by a performance artist and choreographer creating performative experiences for audiences. It has been demonstrated in cyber-physical settings and can be utilized in upcoming developments further integrating virtual and physical worlds.

This paper is concerned with the ways in which a group of Persian women, who have all fled Iran in the last two decades, give meaning to place and memory through the everyday practices of cooking and embroidery. While there are many different localised arts of patterning and flavour, we focus here on the recurring pattern of bota (the Cypress tree). In particular, we examine how the bota motif links both the making of domestic sweets and cloths, and is central in recalling and remaking a sense of place. The Cypress tree symbolises life: the continuation of life in place, and the continuation of place in life. In creating and consuming the bota motif, through eating, laying tablecloths, wrapping towels, sitting on cushions and drawing curtains, embodied experiences of landscape and relationships are reproduced. The embroidery items entail and occasion sensual engagement in and of themselves, and also serve as backgrounds for specific sensual engagements, including, for example, as tablecloths upon which food will be served. Engagement with the bota pattern cannot be characterised along strictly divided sensual dimensions. Rather, we argue that the senses are intertwined in a synaesthetic knot in which memory is embodied and reproduced.

The article explores the connection between the social aspects of affordances and the normativity of environmental perception, referring to the theory of embodied cognition, ecological theory of perception, experimental design, information theory, situated aesthetics and disability aesthetics. The authors argue that distinguishing an affordance from the environmental background does not necessarily depend on recognition and may be associated with the perception of difference (which is facilitated by environmental variability). The main question about how the perception of non-normative affordances is possible leads the authors to the conclusion that the basis of such perception may be non-normative bodily experience (or its possibility), the carriers of which, in particular, are people with experience of disability. It is assumed that the condition for perceiving non-normative affordances in the environment is empathy towards the other who has different affordances, and this empathic access is captured by the concept of "third experience". Illustrated by a number of examples from disability aesthetics, the concept of "third experience" acts as a guide for noticing and designing environments in which difference can be embodied without the risk of slipping into homogeneity on the one hand or diversity on the other.

Gestures are a common, integral part of communication. Here, we investigate the roles of gesture and speech in explanations, both for communicators and recipients. Communicators explained how to assemble a simple object, using either speech with gestures or gestures alone. Gestures used for explaining included pointing and exhibiting to indicate parts, action models to demonstrate assembly, and gestures used to convey narrative structure. Communicators using gestures alone learned assembly better, making fewer assembly errors than those communicating via speech with gestures. Recipients understood and learned better from gesture-only instructions than from speech-only instructions. Gestures demonstrating action were particularly crucial, suggesting that superiority of gestures to speech may reside, at least in part, in compatibility between gesture and action.

Despite the importance of usability in human-machine interaction (HMI), most commonly used devices are not usable by all potential users. In particular, users with low or null technological experience, or with special needs, require carefully designed systems and easy-to-use interfaces supporting recognition over recall. To this purpose, Natural User Interfaces (NUIs) represent an effective strategy as the user's learning is facilitated by features of the interface that mimic the human “natural” sensorimotor embodied interactions with the environment. This paper compares the usability of a new NUI (based on an eye-tracker and hand gesture recognition) with a traditional interface (keyboard) for the distal control of a simulated drone flying in a virtual environment. The whole interface relies on “dAIsy”, a new software allowing the flexible use of different input devices and the control of different robotic platforms. The 59 users involved in the study were required to complete ...

Despite the importance of usability in human-machine interaction (HMI), most commonly used devices are not usable by all potential users. In particular, users with low or null technological experience, or with special needs, require carefully designed systems and easy-to-use interfaces supporting recognition over recall. To this purpose, Natural User Interfaces (NUIs) represent an effective strategy as the user's learning is facilitated by features of the interface that mimic the human “natural” sensorimotor embodied interactions with the environment. This paper compares the usability of a new NUI (based on an eye-tracker and hand gesture recognition) with a traditional interface (keyboard) for the distal control of a simulated drone flying in a virtual environment. The whole interface relies on “dAIsy”, a new software allowing the flexible use of different input devices and the control of different robotic platforms. The 59 users involved in the study were required to complete ...

Mental rotation, a classic experimental paradigm of cognitive psychology, tests the capacity of humans to mentally rotate a seen object to decide if it matches a target object. In recent years, mental rotation has been investigated with brain imaging techniques to identify the brain areas involved. Mental rotation has also been investigated through the development of neural-network models, used to identify the specific mechanisms that underlie its process, and with neurorobotics models to investigate its embodied nature. Current models, however, have limited capacities to relate to neuro-scientific evidence, to generalise mental rotation to new objects, to suitably represent decision making mechanisms, and to allow the study of the effects of overt gestures on mental rotation. The work presented in this study overcomes these limitations by proposing a novel neurorobotic model that has a macro-architecture constrained by knowledge held on brain, encompasses a rather general mental ro...

Within the frame o f Eurofleets, the development o f common software tools included the development o f a reporting tool. EARS, the Eurofleets Autom atic Reporting System consists o f an automatic data acquisition part, a manual event module and reporting functionalities. The manual event module aims in the firs t place to have accurately registered metadata which is only possible when registered as close as possible to the time o f measurement or sampling. Besides complete and correct metadata, interoperable inform ation is o f high importance fo r fu rthe r use, like reporting, browsing and dissemination, over the d ifferent cruises and vessels. Existing vocabularies should be considered as input and vice versa. Especially the SeaDataNet data dictionaries served by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Vocabulary Server are highly relevant. By connecting to these, the standardisation o f m eta-inform ation starts a step sooner: at sea instead o f at the data centre.

This paper introduces a novel framework called the Theory of Collective Affordances, evolving from prior work on negotiation affordances. Drawing from complexity science, active inference, and recent findings on higher-order interactions in dynamic systems, this theory seeks to explain how groups recognize, couple, and reconfigure affordances in negotiation and coordination processes. It proposes that collective affordances emerge from the co-regulated coupling of perceptual, cognitive, and relational capabilities within a dynamic constraint landscape. The framework provides a generative basis for analyzing the stability, adaptability, and evolvability of self-organizing systems under real-world uncertainty. A central hypothesis is that negotiation affordances are properties of dynamic, reconfigurable environments in which degrees of freedom emancipate other degrees of freedom. The coupling of capabilities and constraints in such systems liberates capacity for value realization across four value topologies. This hypothesis can be mathematically modeled using Active Inference and tested via agent-based simulations.

In Evolutionary Biology and Game Theory, there is a long history of models aimed at predicting strategies adopted by agents during resource foraging. In Artificial Life, the agentbased modeling approach allowed to simulate the evolution of foraging behaviors in populations of artificial agents embodied in a simulated environment. In this paper, different sets of behaviors are evolved from a simple setting where agents seek for food patches distributed on a two-dimensional map. While agents are not explicitly playing a game of chicken, their strategies are found on a spectrum ranging from a frugal strategy (aka Dove) to a greedy strategy (aka Hawk). This phenomenon is due to the fact that moving is both a way for the agents to play or go to get away from an unfavorable area of the environment. It is also observed that by moving away, the agents preserve the ecology, preventing the resource from disappearing locally. Those strategies are shown to be stable if the environment is colonized by one given population. However, post-mortem tournaments among different groups of agents (separately evolved), systematically result in a specific group of agents dominating. The optimal strategy in the simulated tournaments is found to be one with fine-tuned timing for leaving. Further analysis shows how the strategy exploits resources without completely depleting them, producing Volterra-like population tendencies.

To study the interfacial complexity between an agent and its environment such as the adaptive selection aspects of sensory inputs, we propose a new coupling mechanism, called autonomous coupling, where an agent can spontaneously switch on or off its interaction with the environment. An oscillatory neural system with autonomous coupling sums the sensory inputs and initiates action selection via a sensorimotor coupling. An example task we designed to show dynamical categorization is the classification of light frequencies. An evolved agent selects specified light frequencies by approaching them and avoiding light of other frequencies. Dynamical categorization and active coupling are the key concepts for the understanding of situated and embodied cognitive functions.

Biostomp is a new musical interface that relies on the use mechanomyography (MMG) as a biocontrol mechanism in live performance situations. Designed in the form of a stomp box, Biostomp translates a performer's muscle movements into control signals. A custom MMG sensor captures the acoustic output of muscle tissue oscillations resulting from contractions. An analog circuit amplifies and filters these signals, and a micro-controller translates the processed signals into pulses. These pulses are used to activate a stepper motor mechanism, which is designed to be mounted on parameter knobs on effects pedals. The primary goal in designing Biostomp is to offer a robust, inexpensive, and easyto-operate platform for integrating biological signals into both traditional and contemporary music performance practices without requiring an intermediary computer software. In this paper, we discuss the design, implementation and evaluation of Biostomp. Following an overview of related work on the use of biological signals in artistic projects, we offer a discussion of our approach to conceptualizing and fabricating a biocontrol mechanism as a new musical interface. We then discuss the results of an evaluation study conducted with 21 professional musicians. A video abstract for Biostomp can be viewed at vimeo.com/biostomp/video.

We noticed that when workers try to explain their mathematical practices to inquisitive outsiders, breakdowns in communication arise. We present here an example in which a worker spontaneously uses metaphors and models to facilitate explanation and communication. We analyse these, drawing on Lakoff & Johnson (1999) and Lakoff & Nunez (2000) in substance and theoretical approach. We suggest that metaphors and cultural models ground associations between academic and workplace discourse genres, and point out how sensori-motor groundings of the 'basic' metaphors may afford gesture and image-schema which free discourse from formal mathematical language. In general we see breakdown repairs as being built through cultural models that extend beyond local mathematical genres which situate mathematics within academic or workplace contexts.

1 According to Web of Science data from 12.11.2017 only 11 of the 191 publications on the topics of "environmental product declaration*" or "type III environmental declaration*'" or "product environmental footprint*" were in social science journals (we leave out the 'other topics'). None of these was in Politics or Environmental Studies journals. Instead, publications were in the Business, Economics and Urban Studies fields. In contrast, according to Web of Science data of the same date, 64 of the 402 publications on the topics of"product carbon footprint*" or "carbon label*" were in social science fields.

One of the major challenges facing neurophysiological HCI design is to determine the systems and sensors that accurately and noninvasively measure human cognitive processes. Specifically, it is a significant undertaking to integrate sensors and measurements into an information system and accurately measure and interpret the human state. Using an experimental design this study explores the use of unobtrusive sensors based on behavioral and neurophysiological responses to predict human trust using the voice. Participants (N=88) completed a face-to-face interview with an Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA) and reported their perceptions of the ECA. They reported three dimensions consistent with the Mayer model of perceived trustworthiness. During the interaction, the demeanor and gender of the avatar was manipulated and these manipulations affected the reported measures of trustworthiness. Using growth modeling and multilevel analysis of covariance methods, a model was developed that could predict human trust during the interaction using the voice, time, and demographics.

For John Donne's "The Ecstasy", cognitive ecology offers a new approach to the divide between Platonism and Aristotelianism in the poem, presenting a continuum between body and soul rather than an opposition or equivalence. In this essay, I argue that Donne charts a continuum of body and soul through a chain of metaphors, knitting together an ecstasy that is both outside and beside the self. One can neither conceive of nor experience such an ecstasy without employing embodied metaphors, metaphors that enable the conceptual movement within the poem. Strictly speaking, souls cannot move, speak, mix, or descend: all these actions are embodied concepts that use human motor-schema to map out abstract notions. The soul's movement occurs in a conceptual space carved out through this chaotic change and exchange of embodied metaphors. This movement of the soul through the body, via the body, knits the "knot, which makes us man".

In this paper, we argue that not all economic interactions can be simulated. Specific types of interactions, instantiated in and instantiating of institutional structures, are embodied in ways that do not admit entailing laws and cannot be expressed in a computational model. Our arguments have two implications: (i) zero intelligence is not merely a computational phenomenon but requires an "embodied" coupling with the environment (theoretical implication); and (ii) some interactions, on which collective phenomena are based, are unprestatable and generate emerging phenomena which cannot be entailed by computation (methodological implication).

This Element discusses contemporary theories of embodied cognition, including what has been termed the "4Es" (embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive cognition). It examines diverse approaches to questions about the nature of the mind, the mind's relation to the brain, perceptual experience, mental representation, sensemaking, the role of the environment, and social cognition, and it considers the strengths and weaknesses of the theories in question. It contrasts embodied and enactive views with classic cognitivism, and discusses major criticisms and their possible resolutions. This Element also provides a strong focus on enactive theory and the prospects for integrating enactive approaches with other embodied and extended theories, mediated through recent developments in predictive processing and the free-energy principle. It concludes with a brief discussion of the practical applications of embodied cognition. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

In all standard philosophical approaches to social cognition, both vision and audition play a central role; tactile and proprioceptive sensations, less central; and taste and olfaction, if they are ever mentioned in theories of social cognition, play a marginal role. This makes it difficult to think of how social cognition might work in the deafblind population. My intention is to outline three different views about social cognition, which attempt to explain intersubjective understanding and communication. I'll show how vision and audition play a central role in all of these accounts. I'll then ask what alternative resources might provide a clue to understanding social cognition in deafblindness, and finally, whether this is the right way to put the question.

The concept of embodied cognition (EC) is not a settled one. A variety of theorists have attempted to outline different approaches and meanings related to this concept. They range from radical embodiment to minimal embodiment, and a number of positions in between. In addition, a variety of approaches to the study of cognition have been closely associated with the notion of embodiment -including enactive, embedded, and extended or distributed cognition approaches. Within these different perspectives there is no strong consensus on what weight to give to the concept of embodiment. Moreover, contrary to what some may think, not all EC approaches share a common opposition to the classical computational model of cognition. In this chapter I want to map out the landscape of these various senses of embodied cognition.

We review 4E (embodied, embedded, extended and enactive) approaches to the analysis of art and aesthetic experience. We argue that extended mind analyses that focus on tool use miss important aspects, and that it requires 4 or more E’s to address the broad spectrum of aesthetic experiences that correlate to the broad variety of artistic genres. We develop an enactive, affordance-based approach to understanding art and aesthetic experience. Considering both the potential and the limitations of any particular approach, we argue that there is no one unified set of principles that will make sense of all art everywhere.

Although predicted by the notion of embodied morality, evidence for a link between bodily representations and (dis)honest choices remains inconclusive. In specific, it remains unknown whether a reduced Sense of body Ownership (SoO) is associated with increased dishonesty or vice versa. To cast light on this controversial issue, we tested patients with Body Integrity Dysphoria (BID), a unique clinical condition characterized by a chronic reduction of SoO towards one leg that they persistently desire to have amputated. Participants with BID played a card game in which they could voluntarily tell the truth or cheat an opponent, and thus either steal or give them money. Responses were communicated with the affected or the unaffected leg, facilitating an assessment of whether SoO towards the effector limb influences (im)moral decisions. We found that the SoO for the effector could not predict behavior during the card game. Crucially, however, a higher number of dishonest, self-gain choic...

Embodied virtual agents serving as patient simulators are widely used in medical training scenarios, ranging from physical patients to virtual patients presented via virtual and augmented reality technologies. Physical-virtual patients are a hybrid solution that combines the benefits of dynamic visuals integrated into a human-shaped physical form that can also present other cues, such as pulse, breathing sounds, and temperature. Sometimes in simulation the visuals and shape do not match. We carried out a human-participant study employing graduate nursing students in pediatric patient simulations comprising conditions associated with matching/non-matching of the visuals and shape.

In this paper, I argue for a revaluation of Paul Ricoeur’s notion of narrative identity in light of what Miriam Kyselo has coined “the body-social problem” in enactivism (Kyselo 2014). It is my contention that while phenomenological perspectives upon the body and the self are considered relevant in enactivism, the hermeneutical, discursive facets are understood as a less essential facet of the self, for instance as the self’s reflexive side, that gives expression to an experiential self (Zahavi 2007: 182-184, 2014: 57-59). Yet, it is in language that the self is addressed by others and that the self reflects upon itself and understands itself. Especially in order to understand aspects of identity which are of importance for the social situation of the self, such as gender, the way we are addressed by others and address ourselves by means of language need to be taken into account.

This paper aims to show the relevance of Ricœur’s notion of the self for postmodern feminist theory, but also to critically assess it. By bringing Ricœur’s “self” into dialogue with Braidotti’s, Irigaray’s and Butler’s conceptions of the subject, it shows that it is close to the feminist self in that it is articulated into language, is embodied and not fully conscious of itself. In the course of the argument, the major point of divergence also comes to light, namely, that the former considers discourse to be a laboratory for thought experiments, while the latter consider discourse to be normative, restrictive and exclusive. In the second part, the possibility of critique and change are further developed. Ricœur does not rule out critique, rather interpretation includes distanciation and critique. Finally, his notion of productive imagination explains how new identifications become possible. 

Theories of embodied cognition postulate that perceptual, sensorimotor, and affective properties of concepts support language learning and processing. In this paper, we argue that language acquisition, as well as processing, is situated in addition to being embodied. In particular, first, it is the situated nature of initial language development that affords for the developing system to become embodied. Second, the situated nature of language use changes across development and adulthood. We provide evidence from empirical studies for embodied effects of perception, action, and valence as they apply to both embodied cognition and situated cognition across developmental stages. Although the evidence is limited, we urge researchers to consider differentiating embodied cognition within situated context, in order to better understand how these separate mechanisms interact for learning to occur. This delineation also provides further clarity to the study of classroom-based applications and the role of embodied and situated cognition in the study of developmental disorders. We argue that theories of language acquisition need to address for the complex situated context of real-world learning by completing a "circular notion": observing experimental paradigms in realworld settings and taking these observations to later refine lab-based experiments.

Crowding is a visual perceptual phenomenon that refers to impaired ability to recognize a suprathreshold object when it is presented in the vicinity of other objects. Crowding therefore poses a limit on object recognition. The phenomenon is regarded to be one of the reasons why young children need large textbook letters. Several studies have provided evidence that crowding imposes a bottleneck on reading speed, and reading long words. Thus, crowding influences visual perception and object recognition in young children. Recent studies show that crowding is stronger in children with visual impairment than in children with normal vision. But which factors are responsible for these strong crowding effects? And how can we reduce crowding in children with visual impairment for whom low visual acuity in itself already poses a bottleneck on object recognition? This review article tries to answer these questions. This knowledge is useful for educational psychologists, because crowding can in...