Cognition has long been thought of as inner information processing, working on perceptual inputs and preparing motor outputs through the manipulation of internal symbols. Those symbols, the "stuff of thought", were conceived as abstract and amodal, only arbitrarily related to their external referents, and being responsible of all the feats that characterize the human mind by virtue of their rule-based manipulation.
However, there is an increasing realization in the cognitive sciences that cognition does not occur only inside the head, but within the interaction with the context. Cognition is grounded in its context. The context of cognition includes the body, with modality-specific perceptual inputs as well as the mechanic and elastic properties of the motor system. Human cognition is also grounded in its social, linguistic and cultural context. Decision making, for example, often takes place within complex dynamics of social interaction with the group, the class, the collaborators... so much that many decisions can be properly said to be taken by the group, instead of by any individual mind. As another example, reasoning often occurs in the interaction between the mind and cultural artifacts such as timelines, calendars, mathematical charts, or computer interfaces, that provide material anchors to our thoughts. In a non-trivial way, reasoning does not only rest on those artifacts, but occurs in the interaction with them. The internal representations of the mind are motivated by the functional characteristics of their use in context.
The Grounded Cognition Lab at the University of Granada (Spain) aims at advancing the understanding of the grounded, embedded, embodied, situated, extended, and dynamic nature of the human mind. Central questions are:
However, there is an increasing realization in the cognitive sciences that cognition does not occur only inside the head, but within the interaction with the context. Cognition is grounded in its context. The context of cognition includes the body, with modality-specific perceptual inputs as well as the mechanic and elastic properties of the motor system. Human cognition is also grounded in its social, linguistic and cultural context. Decision making, for example, often takes place within complex dynamics of social interaction with the group, the class, the collaborators... so much that many decisions can be properly said to be taken by the group, instead of by any individual mind. As another example, reasoning often occurs in the interaction between the mind and cultural artifacts such as timelines, calendars, mathematical charts, or computer interfaces, that provide material anchors to our thoughts. In a non-trivial way, reasoning does not only rest on those artifacts, but occurs in the interaction with them. The internal representations of the mind are motivated by the functional characteristics of their use in context.
The Grounded Cognition Lab at the University of Granada (Spain) aims at advancing the understanding of the grounded, embedded, embodied, situated, extended, and dynamic nature of the human mind. Central questions are:
- What are the roles played in human thought by its main contexts of interaction: body, language, co-actors and culture?
- How can we think of abstract concepts such as time, number, power, trustworthiness, or the good and the bad? How are they grounded in modality-specific interactions with context in its broadest sense?
- How does communication arise in the multimodal interaction between interlocutors?
- How is thought scaffolded by material anchors provided by culture and education?
- How are communicative systems motivated and constrained by the grounded mind?
