After reading first book by Alva Noe- Out of our heads- I was quite astounded how revolutionary his ideas were. Alva is in favor of embodied cognition, believing that the relationship between mind and body is not single-directional. It posits that body can affect mind in various ways and it is an essential mediator of the final results of our cognition.
In this vein, Proffitt' s lab demonstrated that even a very low perception, such as judging of steepness of hill is dependent on tuning of our body. Participants who were fatigued, in a bad shape or burdened by a heavy backpack judged the hill as much steeper than those who were not. Furthermore, judging a hill when viewed from a side (thus the steepness is quite evident) is very imprecise and overestimated when done verbally, however, motor estimations of the angle are quite accurate.
In this vein, Proffitt' s lab demonstrated that even a very low perception, such as judging of steepness of hill is dependent on tuning of our body. Participants who were fatigued, in a bad shape or burdened by a heavy backpack judged the hill as much steeper than those who were not. Furthermore, judging a hill when viewed from a side (thus the steepness is quite evident) is very imprecise and overestimated when done verbally, however, motor estimations of the angle are quite accurate.
There is a growing interest and amount of literature on the fascinating field of embodied cognition. E.g. Damasio's books on the relation between body, mind, emotions and rationality.. But caution as well as lenience is needed since these theories are still very young and IMO currently trying to find out how far they can dare to go. I would be interested for example in replications of the backpack experiment.
ReplyDeleteI agree....embodiment is a broad research platform and basically epistemological stand, but if we go too far we realize that we are influenced by everything! Like e.g., my cold drink I am having right now can influence a perception of another person (Bargh & Williams, 2006) :)
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