As a young French master’s student who was not very comfortable with English, reading Larry’s seminal 1999 paper was quite a challenge. It was neither the shortest nor the easiest paper to digest, yet it profoundly influenced my academic journey. This work was decisive in choosing the direction of my master’s thesis, and it shaped my perspective on how the brain works for years to come.
Larry’s career is marked by an impressive body of influential ideas. Over the decades, he has consistently produced highly influential work. Just two years after defending his PhD, he published one of his most significant papers on ad hoc categories. Nonetheless, it was his aforementioned 1999 paper published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences that established his name at the pinnacle of cognitive science. Saying that this article broke new ground would not be a fitting metaphor in the context of grounded cognition, but it definitely laid some of the most important foundation of this framework, and led Larry to become one of its driving forces. This paper later inspired hundreds of researchers worldwide, including myself, to explore the sensorimotor grounding of concepts. Many of these investigations continue today, including his own ongoing research.
In this respect, I believe Larry continues to lead the direction of the field. Research on grounded cognition remains largely focused on basic processes like conceptual processing. However, as suggested by his most recent line of research on health cognition, which I had the privilege to help develop, it is time to take the theory outside the laboratory. Indeed, I believe that grounded cognition has great potential to impact healthcare and, more generally, society.
When I began to work with him, I started to be inspired not only by Larry’s scientific contribution, but also by the person and the researcher. Despite his academic success, anyone who has had the privilege to meet him can surely attest to his kindness, simplicity, and approachability. Yet, when the moment calls for it, his passion comes out—evident in his vehement responses to recent papers.
This passion seems to have preserved within him the curiosity and enthusiasm of a PhD student. It is this same passion that still drives him to continually learn new things, both theoretically—as seen when he shifted to health cognition—and technically. Indeed, while working with him, I was amazed that, at this stage of his career, he still had the drive to learn new advanced skills in psychometrics and statistics—even learning to code in R.
In sum, beyond his scientific achievements, Larry is an inspiration to me for the way he has developed both as a person and as a researcher. His enduring passion, relentless curiosity, and willingness to learn are qualities I will take as an example throughout my own career.
1 Comment
Léo, I felt so lucky when you moved to Glasgow for a post doc. When we first met in Paris, where you had just finished your PhD, it had seemed that we were on similar wavelengths and could produce a lot of great work. And indeed, this was true. You played a central role in developing the Situated Assessment Method (SAM2) and applying it to many different areas, including habits, trichotillomania, stress, and mindfulness. In the initial work that developed this approach, I’d used it as an excuse to learn data wrangling, mixed effects modeling, and visualization in R, with guidance from Christoph Scheepers and Dale Barr. When you came along, you took these analyses, along with the scripts that implemented them, to another level. What a huge contribution you made to all these projects and to our general approach.
Working with you was such a pleasure. It was always easy, enjoyable, and productive. As I mentioned in the reply to Christy Wilson-Mendenhall’s post, I’ve increasingly practiced slow science over the years, trying to ensure that we produce quality work that is worth doing. Like Christy, you appeared to favor and savor this approach as well. Although we never wasted time, we also didn’t rush things, and IMHO the results generally reflected the care we took. Also, like Christy, I felt that you supervised me as much as I supervised you. It was always a two-way collaboration, where what emerged was greater than the sum of the parts.
You mentioned that grounded cognition has considerable potential applications for mental and physical health. I’m so glad that you pointed this out. I agree completely. Situations, embodiment, multimodal simulations, and situated action all play central roles in health behaviors. To change unhealthy habits and implement healthier ones, it makes sense to take all these core processes into account and work with them. It was great to see you resonate with this perspective. We both seemed to realize its potential increasingly over the time we worked together.
I’m happy to see that you’ve ended up in a great position at Lyon. I very much look forward to seeing how your research develops. The care and thoughtfulness in your work lends it much potential, and good things are likely to result.