Seminario di Dipartimento (SeRiC): Embodied Numerical Cognition

Partecipanti: Martin H. Fischer - University of Potsdam

A traditional understanding of human knowledge, also frequently applied to artificial intelligence, is the idea that cognition involves manipulating abstract symbols in the mind. More recently, this view has been challenged by the alternative proposal that human knowledge is “embodied”.

Following a definition of this new and influential theoretical perspective (Fischer, 2012), I will focus on the domain of numbers to argue that even these supposedly “abstract” concepts exhibit systematic sensory and motor biases when examined in spatial tasks. These performance signatures are interpreted as reflecting the embodied nature of our number knowledge.

In the second part of my presentation I will report recent work of the Potsdam Embodied Cognition Group that probes the sensory-motor links of number concepts. For example, I will show how finger counting shapes the cognitive performance signatures of adults, even for negative number concepts (Fischer & Shaki, 2017).
Implications of embodied cognition for educational practices and the design of user interfaces will be discussed.

References
Fischer, M. H. (2012). A hierarchical view of grounded, embodied and situated numerical cognition. Cognitive Processing, 13, S161-S164. DOI 10.1007/s10339-012-0477-5.
Fischer, M. H., & Shaki, S. (2017). Implicit spatial-numerical associations: Negative numbers and the role of counting direction. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance (in press).