Multi-modal simulation in conceptual processing

1 Over the course of the Medin Festschrift, we heard a lot about Doug's intellectual qualities and contributions. Certainly these are impressive and significant. Nevertheless, one thing that I've learned from adopting the embodied perspective on cognition is that this perspective often leads one to notice new things not seen from other perspectives. Given the strong cognitive orientation of most participants here, it is perhaps not surprising that we have focused so far on Doug's intellectual qualities. It might be interesting, though, to think about Doug from the embodied perspective. Perhaps we will see new qualities not noticed before. One such quality was revealed by an event that occurred the day before the Festschrift. On my flight from Atlanta to Chicago, I wore bike riding shorts, because I was going to ride the bike path along Lake Michigan after arriving. Notably, these shorts do not have a belt. Furthermore, the belt that I usually take on a trip is the one that I wear on the plane. Because I was not wearing a belt, I arrived in Chicago without one. As a result, I found myself standing around holding up my pants that evening at Sandy Waxman's welcoming party. Then a most fortuitous event occurred (especially for this story). As I was leaving the party, I ran into Doug in Sandy's front yard and asked if he could bring me a belt the next morning. Being the extremely generous guy that he is, Doug took off his belt on the spot and handed it to me. I'm sure that Sandy's neighbors are still talking about this. More importantly, though, when I put on the belt, it was about three inches too short, which I found surprising, given that I'm in pretty good physical condition. The thought that ran immediately through my mind was, " Wow, Doug is in great shape. " As anyone who has spent a few days with Doug knows, he exercises religiously and eats carefully, with the result being his gazelle-like figure. This is one of Doug's embodied qualities that might be missed from a purely cognitive perspective. Another of Doug's most notable embodied qualities is how intensely he blushes. When I pointed this out at the workshop, true to form, Doug produced one of his most intense and beautiful blushes ever. Making Doug blush is a favorite pastime of his friends. As these examples illustrate, the …

[1]  Alex Martin,et al.  Representation of Manipulable Man-Made Objects in the Dorsal Stream , 2000, NeuroImage.

[2]  Christine D. Wilson,et al.  Grounding conceptual knowledge in modality-specific systems , 2003, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[3]  Lawrence W Barsalou,et al.  Abstraction in perceptual symbol systems. , 2003, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences.

[4]  M. Posner.  Attention in cognitive neuroscience: An overview. , 1995 .

[5]  F. Samejima.  Cognitive processes. , 2021, Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation.

[6]  Gary L. Dannenbring,et al.  Semantic priming and the word repetition effect in a lexical decision task. , 1982 .

[7]  Alex Martin,et al.  Functional Neuroimaging of Semantic Memory , 2001 .

[8]  Diane Pecher,et al.  Sensorimotor simulations underlie conceptual representations: Modality-specific effects of prior activation , 2004, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[9]  George S. Cree,et al.  Factors underlying category-specific semantic deficits , 2001 .

[10]  Karen Olseth Solomon.  The spontaneous use of perceptual representations during conceptual processing , 1997 .

[11]  Lawrence W. Barsalou,et al.  Representing Properties Locally , 2001, Cognitive Psychology.

[12]  L. Barsalou.  Situated simulation in the human conceptual system , 2003 .

[13]  M. Brett,et al.  Large, colorful, or noisy? Attribute- and modality-specific activations during retrieval of perceptual attribute knowledge , 2001 .

[14]  S. Bentin,et al.  The Contribution of Morphological and Semantic Relatedness to Repetition Priming at Short and Long Lags: Evidence from Hebrew , 1990, The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. A, Human experimental psychology.

[15]  M. Posner,et al.  Attention and cognitive control. , 1975 .

[16]  D. Besner,et al.  Priming effects that span an intervening unrelated word: implications for models of memory representation and retrieval. , 1992, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[17]  D. Medin,et al.  The specific character of abstract thought: Categorization, problem-solving, and induction: Volume 5 , 1989 .

[18]  A. Glenberg,et al.  What memory is for: Creating meaning in the service of action , 1997, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[19]  R. Ratcliff,et al.  Conceptual combinations and relational contexts in free association and in priming in lexical decision and naming , 1995, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[20]  L. Barsalou,et al.  Verifying Different-Modality Properties for Concepts Produces Switching Costs , 2003, Psychological science.

[21]  Diane Pecher,et al.  Verifying Properties from Different Modalities for Concepts Produces Switching Costs , 2002 .

[22]  Rolf A. Zwaan,et al.  Language Comprehenders Mentally Represent the Shapes of Objects , 2002, Psychological science.

[23]  A. Damasio.  Time-locked multiregional retroactivation: A systems-level proposal for the neural substrates of recall and recognition , 1989, Cognition.

[24]  Timothy P. McNamara,et al.  Theories of priming: I. Associative distance and lag. , 1992 .

[25]  Sergio E. Chaigneau,et al.  THE SIMILARITY-IN-TOPOGRAPHY PRINCIPLE: RECONCILING THEORIES OF CONCEPTUAL DEFICITS , 2003, Cognitive neuropsychology.

[26]  R. Cabeza,et al.  Handbook of functional neuroimaging of cognition , 2001 .

[27]  C. Spence,et al.  The cost of expecting events in the wrong sensory modality , 2001, Perception & psychophysics.

[28]  M. Gazzaniga.  The new cognitive neurosciences, 2nd ed. , 2000 .

[29]  Rolf A. Zwaan,et al.  PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Research Article THE EFFECT OF IMPLIED ORIENTATION DERIVED FROM VERBAL CONTEXT ON PICTURE RECOGNITION , 2022 .

[30]  Thomas A. Schreiber,et al.  The University of South Florida free association, rhyme, and word fragment norms , 2004, Behavior research methods, instruments, & computers : a journal of the Psychonomic Society, Inc.

[31]  M. Masson.  A distributed memory model of semantic priming. , 1995 .

[32]  E. Tulving,et al.  Episodic and semantic memory , 1972 .

[33]  Alex Martin,et al.  Semantic memory and the brain: structure and processes , 2001, Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

[34]  Irene P. Kan,et al.  ROLE OF MENTAL IMAGERY IN A PROPERTY VERIFICATION TASK: FMRI EVIDENCE FOR PERCEPTUAL REPRESENTATIONS OF CONCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE , 2003, Cognitive neuropsychology.

[35]  Douglas L. Medin,et al.  Context theory of classification learning. , 1978 .

[36]  B. Ross,et al.  Reminding-based category learning , 1990, Cognitive Psychology.

[37]  Robert L. Goldstone,et al.  Reuniting perception and conception , 1998, Cognition.

[38]  R. Sternberg.  Advances in the psychology of human intelligence , 1982 .

[39]  L. Barsalou,et al.  Perceptual simulation in property verification , 2004, Memory & cognition.

[40]  Ken McRae,et al.  Category - Specific semantic deficits , 2008 .

[41]  L. Barsalou,et al.  Whither structured representation? , 1999, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.