Grounding Cognition

One of the key questions in cognitive psychology is how people represent knowledge about concepts such as football or love. 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 developments 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 understanding of words and object concepts. Moreover, even understanding of abstract and emotion concepts can be shown to rely on more concrete, embodied experiences. Finally, language itself can be shown to be grounded in sensorimotor processes. This book brings together theoretical arguments and empirical evidence from several key researchers in this field to support this framework.

Diane Pecher is assistant professor at the Erasmus University Rotterdam (The Netherlands). She received a PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 1999. Her dissertation 'Dynamics of Semantic Memory' was supervised by Jeroen G. W. Raaijmakers. Her research is funded by a grant from the Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research (NWO). Rolf A. Zwaan is Professor of Psychology at Florida State University. He received his PhD from Utrecht University, The Netherlands, in 1992 and is the author of over 60 scientific publications. His journal publications include articles in Psychological Science, Cognition, and Psychological Bulletin. His research is funded by grants from the National Institute of Health.