Embodied Cognition Reading

Embodied Cognition 

    What is the task to be done? What are the resources available? How might these resources be assembled to solve the task? Did the subject assemble and use these resources? These are the four main questions that researchers are trying to answer through embodied cognition. In Andrew Wilson and Sabrina Golonka's article Embodied Cognition is not what you think it is, they address this new theory that cognition is not only limited to the brain; rather, it is influenced by factor such as our body and the environment as well. This suggests that our brains eliminate the need for complex mental representation of what we perceive due to the resources provided by the environment and our bodies to accomplish tasks.

    One of the main points in this article that struck my attention the most was the concept of locomotion and passive dynamics. I hadn't ever asked myself the question "why do we walk the way that we walk?" However, when I came across this section in the reading, in sparked my interest. "Humans don’t walk like lions because our bodies aren’t designed like lions’ bodies." This is a fairly obvious statement, however I had never thought of it as a biological trait over a cognitive one. They go on to explain that the reason that we walk on two feet instead of four is due to the bodies structure and not solely due to cognition. When they represented this with the robots who had no programming to walk on two feet, but learned to do so through their structure and environment.

    The idea of embodied cognition makes sense if you really think about it. It would be near impossible for us to simply be born with the cognitive abilities to survive and exist. Although we are naturally equipped with a mind and body suitable to our environment,it takes interaction and experience with our surroundings to make sense of it all. As we grow older, we experience more from our environment and become to understand things on a new level. Because of this, we can then use the interaction between our environment and cognition to provide things such as heuristics, which help take pressure off of the brain by creating mental shortcuts that we use in our daily lives.

    Before reading this article, I was unsure of if I understood what embodied cognition truly was. Now, I have a whole new insight into a theory in psychology that I didn't even know existed. This text was both informational, as well as interesting to learn about. I would say that I agree with the embodied cognition theory and I hope to learn more as research continues.

     

Embodied cognition is the hypothesis that cognition is not only limited to the brain; rather, it is influenced by factor such as our body and the environment as well. This concept was a bit confusing to me at first, however, upon reading the article I obtained a much clearer understanding of how embodied cognition works and which aspects of life it affects. 

    The most intriguing section, to me, were the experiments with the robots and animals.