lecture 3 - embodiement

Question 1

experimental observation - how do you feel experiment
-stepper and strack 1993

Answer 1

-your sitting in normal pose, or two other conditions called ‘ergonomic’ posture ( the shoulders were held high and back, or in which the shoulders and head were slumped )
(3 conditions)

-during the participants being in this posture, they were told / learned that they had succeeded on an
achievement test completed earlier.

• Those who received the good news in the slumped posture felt
  less proud and reported being in a worse mood than participants in the upright or working posture.

in real world - tells us our psychological state are influence by factors outside our awareness

Question 2

experimental observations :
valence and movement experiment
Duckworth et al. (2002)

Answer 2

-Images that typically evoke emotionally positive and
negative responses were presented on a computer screen.
-Experimental participants were asked to indicate when a picture appeared by quickly moving a lever.
Some participants were instructed to push a lever away from their body, whereas others were instructed to pull a lever toward their body.

• Participants who pushed the lever away responded to negative images faster than to positive images, whereas participants who pulled the lever toward themselves responded faster to positive images

does the content make a difference ? yes

Question 3

experimental observation : is that a decent pen experiment
Tom et al. (1991)

Answer 3

• Under the guise of studying the quality of different headphones, participants were induced either to nod in agreement or to shake their heads in disagreement with statements. While they were “testing” their headphones with
  one of these two movements, the experimenter placed a pen on the table in front of them. Later, a different experimenter offered the participants the pen that had been placed on the table earlier or a novel pen.
• Individuals who were nodding their heads preferred the old
  pen, whereas participants who had been shaking their heads
  preferred the new one

Question 4

experimental observations
-is that a nice symbol
Cacioppo et al. (1993)

Answer 4

• Novel Chinese idiograms presented during arm flexion
  (i.e., an action associated with approach) were subsequently evaluated more favourably than idiograms presented during arm extension (i.e., an action
  associated with avoidance)

Question 5

mind-body intereactions
-fake it till you make it

Answer 5

the power pose talk
Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk on power poses explores how adopting confident, expansive body language can influence not only how others perceive us, but also how we perceive ourselves. She explains that adopting “power poses” — postures that take up space and exude confidence — can lead to higher feelings of power, reduce stress, and even improve our chances of success in high-pressure situations, like interviews or presentations

Question 6

what is the mind body problem

Answer 6

• Dualism
  body: works like a machine (obeys laws of physics)
  mind: non-material (functions mysteriously)
  Problem - how can the mind influence the body (and
  vice versa)?
  as it turns out, very easily!

Question 7

quotes about the mind and body
Descartes
Lakoff and nunez

Answer 7

“There is a great difference between mind and body, inasmuch as body is by nature always divisible, and the mind is entirely indivisible…the mind or soul of man is entirely different from the body.”

• “Cognitive science calls this entire philosophical worldview into serious question on empirical grounds… [the mind] arises from the nature of our brains, bodies, and bodily experiences. This is not just the innocuous and obvious claim that we need a body to reason; rather, it is the striking claim that the very structure of reason itself comes from the details of our embodiment… Thus, to understand reason we must understand the details
  of our visual system, our motor system, and the general mechanism of neural binding.”

Question 8

what is the nature of knowledge - how is information stored in the brain

Answer 8

it is generally agreed that the processing of any mental
content, including social information, involves internal
symbols of sort (i.e., mental representations - symbolic
processing, computational processing)

Question 9

what are these representations?
-How do representations derive their meaning (i.e.,
symbol grounding problem - Harnard, 2003)
example

Answer 9

barcod - is a symbol means something but they dont resmble what they stand for

-this is similar to knowledge

Question 10

what are amodal architecture
example of amodal representation

Answer 10

Amodal is the perception of information when only parts are visible, therefore the Amodal perception can be compared to how an architect might visualise a building design. The architect may be able to mentally manipulate and rotate the design in their mind without physically moving the building model

-bar code is am example, doesnt look like what it represents in any form

Question 11

amodal architectures examples

Answer 11

bar code

mind as computer metaphor
hardware vs. software (Block, 1995)
body vs. mind (independent)
* high-level cognitive operations (inference, categorization, memory) are performed using abstract,
amodal symbols that bear arbitrary relations to the perceptual states that produce them (Newell & Simon, 1972).
* knowledge is abstract and amodal - symbols may represent any ideational content irrespective of which sensory modality was involved in its perception.

Question 12

modal dog example
-how does the modal view describe a dog

Answer 12

• Sensory-Motor Information (modality-specific systems
  -what do they look like
  -what sounds to dogs make
  -how they smell

-this modal view would suggest that it doesnt matter how you aquire this knowledge or which sensory modality is used

Question 13

how does amodal view say about representations

Answer 13

-multi-sensory information transformed into amodal
symbolic representation
* mental operations (e.g., thinking) are then undertaken on these amodal representations

Question 14

when intereacting with a person-how do amdoal structure etablish representation and accumulate knowledge

Answer 14

• When interacting with a person, amodal symbolsredescribe the experienced perceptions, actions, and introspections to establish a conceptual representation
  of the interaction in long-term memory.
• As our knowledge grows, the underlying amodal
  systems become organized into structures that represent
  concepts (e.g., schemas) extracted from experience.
• Amodal redescriptions of social experience constitute
  social knowledge.

Question 15

problems with amodal architectures

Answer 15

• What exactly is the redescription process that produces amodal symbols from modality-specific (e.g., perception, action) states?
• no evidence exists for such a process in the brain
• There is no compelling evidence that the brain contains amodal symbols.
• The amodal symbol account is at odds with the available empirical evidence.

Question 16

due to lack of evidence : embodied architectures

Answer 16

Researchers have recently adopted the notion that knowledge is embodied or grounded in bodily states and in the brain’s modality-specific systems (Barsalou,
1999)

Question 17

what is the basic idea behind embodied cognition

Answer 17

The basic idea underlying theories of embodied cognition is that cognitive representations and
operations are grounded in their physical context. Rather than relying on amodal abstractions that exist independently of their physical instantiation, cognition relies on the brain’s modality-specific systems and on actual bodily states.

Whatever sensory info you have about anything gets laid down and represented in that specific sensory system. eg if you have a visual info about a dog, it gets represented in visual areas in the brain

Question 18

what are perceptual symbol systems : Barsalou 1999

Answer 18

modality-specific states that represent perception, action and
introspection in on-line situations are also used to represent
these situations in the off-line processing that underlies
memory, language and thought.

• rather than using amodal redescriptions of on-line modality-
  specific states to represent situations, the cognitive system
  uses reenactments (simulations) of them instead

Question 19

what is the key notion of perceptual symbol systems

Answer 19

the key notion of PSS is that simulations of perceptual, motor,
and introspective experience underlie the representation and
processing of knowledge.

Question 20

reenactment in pps

Answer 20

reenactment (simulation) of processing operations in
modality-specific systems (i.e., think about a dog)
eg if you think of cheescake your mouth might water.

Question 21

bevrage exp
form of embodiemnt

Answer 21

go in an elavator, somone asks you to either hold a warm drink (condition one) or hold a cold drink.
-then you have interaction with someone else and if drink was hot you perceive the intereaction more positivley

Question 22

classroom simulations : much of every day life is a sensoy motor stimulation

Answer 22

eg imagine jogging on the beach, if you could use equipment to see what was going on in toe systems. would be able to detect you simulating that experience

Question 23

evidence form embodied social cognition

Answer 23

-attitudes
-social perception
-emotion
-on line / off line embodiment

Question 24

embodiment of attitudes
Darwin

Answer 24

• Darwin (1904) defined an attitude as a collection of motor behaviours -especially posture - that convey an
  organism’s response toward an object.

Question 25

what is involved in attitudinal processing

Answer 25

body involved in attitudinal processing

Question 26

what is on line / off line embodiment

Answer 26

online - when your inereacting in real time with people in the world , so happening instantly in the here and now off line- your by yourself, no sensory experience, your regenerating or simulating , your reenacting your experience

Question 27

embodiment of attitudes exp (on line) Wells and Petty 1980

Answer 27

- Participants instructed to nod or shake their heads while wearing headphones, under the pretext that the research was designed to investigate whether the headphones slipped off while the listeners moved to music. While nodding or shaking, participants heard either an agreeable or disagreeable message about a university-related topic. Later they rated how much they agreed with the message. Movements modulated judgments (nod = agree with message, shake = disagree with message)

Question 28

embodiment of attitudes exp (off line) Förster & Strack (1997, 1998)

Answer 28

* Participants generated the names of famous people and later classified the individuals according to whether they liked, disliked, or were neutral about them. During the name generation task, participants either pulled up on the table in front of them from underneath its bottom surface (an approach behaviour) or pushed down on its top surface (an avoidance behaviour). Participants who performed the ‘approach’ behaviour during name generation retrieved more names of people they liked, whereas those who performed the ‘avoidance’ action retrieved more names of people they disliked.

Question 29

embodiment of social perception -on line Meltzoff and Moore (1977, 1989)

Answer 29

-Neonates imitate basic facial gestures such as tongue protrusion and mouth opening -* synchrony, behavioural cordination speech rate accent syntax walking speed * Facilitates rapport and harmony (LaFrance, 1985)

Question 30

embodiment of social perception off line Bargh et al. (1996)

Answer 30

Embodiment of social perception when targets are not present. Category priming (e.g., grey, Florida, bingo) and subsequent walking speed. -getting people to walk slowly or quick -in phase one, give participants a scarmbled sentence task : given 5 words in a string and turn them into a sentence that makes sense by leaving one word out -unkowlingly to participants the words they would encounter in this study like grey, florida, bingo that were alegeddley associated with older people -they then measure ue walking speed when you leave Participants walked more slowly when primed with elderly stereotype

Question 31

embodiement of social perception off line Vanman et al. (1997)

Answer 31

Participants formed impressions of people with whom they might later work on a problem- solving task. Some of these people were competent while others were incompetent. Facial EMG was measured. Participants were more likely to display positive facial reactions when their imagined partners were competent rather than incompetent

Question 32

embodiment of emotion online Strack et al. (1988) very contreversial

Answer 32

* Researchers told participants that they were studying adaptations for people who had lost the use of their hands. Such individuals would need to use their mouths to hold pencils for writing, or to use a television remote. The study was to assess whether the unpleasantness or difficulty of these tasks affected people’s responsiveness. * The participants then held a pencil in their teeth (which naturally activates the muscles typically used for smiling) or lips (which does not activate those muscles) and then rated several cartoons for funniness. Those who were (unknowingly) "smiling" rated the cartoons as funnier than people who were not smiling.

Question 33

embodiment of social perception (on line) additional findings Williams and Bargh (2008)

Answer 33

* Prior to an impression-formation task, participants were required to hold (during a brief elevator journey) a cup of hot or iced coffee. Afterwards, they gave their impressions of a stranger. * Participants considered the target to have more favourable traits (e.g., generous, caring) when they previously held the hot rather than cold cup. * warmth, nurturing

Question 34

Embodiment of Social Perception (Off-line): Recent Findings Macrae et al. (2013)

Answer 34

* Prior to an impression-formation task, participants were required to imagine holding a cup of hot or iced coffee (from a first- or third- person perspective). Afterwards, they gave their impressions of a hypothetical stranger. * Participants considered the target to have more favourable traits when they previously imagined holding hot rather than iced coffee – but only from a first-person perspective

Question 35

neural simulation -perceiving vs imagining -imagining in first and 3rd person

Answer 35

eg bear perceiving -on line , real brain perceiving real threat imagining -off line -same thing happens but in a attenuated, diluted way (thats what it would be liek to have a simulation or reenactment of a bear) -the first person perscepctive will give you a more real simulation

Question 36

pain in the brain imagined pain (Jackson et al., 2005) AI - interoception (Craig, 2009)

Answer 36

anterior insula - critical part of brain when experiencing pain -when imagining pain, interior insula also shows same effects * guided mental imagery, had people go in a brain scanner and imagiene variable things stub toe, slam hand in door etc * manipulate visual perspective (within subjects) so participants either had to imagine it from a first person perspective or a third person perspective actor (1PP) vs. observer (3PP)

Question 37

results of imagined pain in brain experiment

Answer 37

- the activity in your brain is greater for first person imagery versus third person -experience of imagined pain worse for pp in first person perspective

Question 38

what does emotion recognition involve how can it help us undertsand / preditc how others feel

Answer 38

* Recognizing a facial expression of emotion in another person and experiencing that emotion oneself involve overlapping neural structures. * Understanding other minds via simulation (mirror neurons) – body-based simulation (Rizzolatti & Craighero, 2004)

Question 39

Wicker et al. (2003) mirroring exp

Answer 39

Participants were required to sniff odors that generated feelings of disgust. The same participants then watched videos of other individuals expressing disgust. Results showed that areas of the anterior insula were activated both when individuals observed disgust in others and when they experienced disgust themselves. * Mirroring

Question 40

closing examples grounding abstract thought in concrete experience

Answer 40

thinking about the future caused participants to lean slightly forwards while thinking about the past caused them to lean slightly back (i.e., future is ahead, see Miles et al., 2010). * squeezing a soft ball prompted participants to perceive gender neutral faces as female while squeezing a hard ball influenced them to perceive the faces as male (i.e., female is soft, see Slepian et al., 2011). * participants who held heavier clipboards judged currencies to be more valuable and their opinions to be more important (i.e., important is heavy, see Jostmann et al., 2008).

Question 41

Washing Away Your Sins Embodiment and Moral Purity * Zhong & Liljenquist (2006) - Lady Macbeth Effect -are physical and moral purity interchangeable

Answer 41

Participants were asked to describe an unethical deed from their past and were then given the option of cleaning their hands with an antiseptic wipe. Afterwards, participants who had chosen to clean their hands were less likely to volunteer their time to help a desperate student with their research. They were also less likely to express feelings of guilt, regret and shame in a survey. physical cleansing restores our moral self image. * abstract thought grounded in concrete experience (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999).

Question 42

Weight and Importance Jostmann et al. (2009)

Answer 42

* How many Euros does it take to buy 100 Japanese Yen? * Participants holding a heavy clipboard increased the monetary value of foreign currency compared to those holding a light clipboard. * Embodiment of importance. metaphoric cognition abstract to concrete

Question 43

are all these effects real (effects of embodiment )

Answer 43

large effects, small samples * high powered replications (OSF) power poses (Garrison et al., 2016) warm/cold showers (Donnellan et al., 2015) facial feedback (Wagenmakers et al., 2016) moral transgressions/cleanliness (Johnson et al., 2014) priming elderly (Doyen et al., 2012)