Betreuer: Martin Fischer (martinf@uni-potsdam.de)
Betreuer: Elena Kulkova (kulkovauuni-potsdampde)
Betreuer: Jochen Laubrock (laubrockuuni-potsdampde)
Betreuer: Alex Miklashevsky (armanster31ugmailpcom)
How do we understand numbers? Some studies suggest that our numerical knowledge is grounded in very basic experiences, such as the spatial association of smaller numbers and left side and larger numbers and right side. Perhaps also counting habits play a role? Almost all over the world, children use their fingers to learn numbers, and these finger representations may still be activated in adults when they perform mathematical calculations in mind. See for more information a recent publication from our group: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2020.590508/full
Understanding abstract concepts, such as time, can be grounded in basic experiences with space. For example, participants associate the past with the left side and the future with the right side (see for details: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cogs.12709). Yet, there are many open questions about such associations: when and why do they appear? What is their role in the process of understanding? How do they influence our everyday decisions?
Understanding abstract concepts, such as valence, can be grounded in basic experiences with space. For example, in many studies, right-handed participants associate negative concepts with the left side and positive concepts with the right side (https://casasanto.com/papers/Casasanto_JEPG_2009.pdf). Yet, there are many open questions about such associations: when and why do they appear? What is their role in the process of understanding? How do they influence our everyday decisions?
When reading a sentence like Anna signed a contract, participants unconsciously activate their motor system (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0050287). According to embodied cognition, to understand motor language (like words write, run, hammer, or fork), one must activate one’s own experiences. The question is whether this activation is a necessary part of understanding or just a secondary artifact. It is also important to find out when this activation appears and when not – for example, by testing different semantic tasks, sentences with negation (Anna did not sign the contract), or conditional mood (Anna would sign a contract).
It is relatively easy for embodied cognition to explain how people understand concepts of apple or chair based on their physical experience with those objects. Abstract concepts, such as freedom or justice, are much more challenging. They cannot be seen, touched, or smelled, yet people somehow understand these words. How does this happen? In what way are those concepts acquired? How are they processed? These questions received much attention in the embodied cognition literature, but the answers are still unclear.
While experimental studies are essential, they usually use only a small subset of words/concepts for testing hypotheses. However, there are large psycholinguistic databases where information is collected for thousands of words: how much each word is related to seeing, hearing, smelling, or to what extent people need to use their hands, feet, or head to interact with each object (e.g., https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/psychology/lsnorms/). By analyzing such datasets with statistical methods or combining several datasets in one study, researchers can ask intriguing questions of embodied cognition – most of all, how we understand abstract concepts.
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