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

Diane Pecher, Rolf A. Zwaan9780521168571, 0521168570

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 human understanding of words and object concepts. This book brings together theoretical arguments and empirical evidence from several key researchers in this field to support this framework.