#symbodiment should be #symbodimeaning: Do we need concepts?

How are the meanings of words, events, and objects represented and organized in the brain? This question, perhaps more than any other in the field, probes some of the deepest and most foundational puzzles regarding the structure of the mind and brain. …so begins Mahon and Hickok’s introduction to this collection of papers “on issues of fundamental significance to […]

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From #symbodiment to Radical Embodied Cognition

The special issue of Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, in conjunction with the digital #symbodiment event, represents an effort to take stock of the “embodiment vs. symbols” debate that has garnered an increasing amount of attention in the field. In this commentary, I present a few thoughts about the successes and failures of the embodied research program, and offer some thoughts on the road forward. […]

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Arguments about the nature of concepts: #symbodiment and beyond

(This post is an edited and abridged version of the opening article to the #symbodiment special issue of the Psychonomic Bulletin & Review authored by Bradford Z. Mahon and Gregory Hickok. The full article can be found here.) The question of how word, object, event and action meanings are represented and organized in the brain has […]

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#symbodiment: God may really be up there but perhaps your lips don’t listen?

How are the meanings of words, events and objects represented and organized in the brain? When we think of a dog, what representation are we invoking? Is there such thing as an abstract dogness—the doggiest of all dogs—or do we merely remember one of many stored exemplars of dogs that we have encountered in our lives? (If […]

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Gone with the Rosebud: What movies are really like

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Perhaps like no other medium, movies have articulated, reflected, and shaped our culture for nearly a century. On the positive side, they have brought enjoyment to millions and made us want to have what she’s having. On the darker side, they have been effective tools of totalitarian propaganda. But […]

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Groundhog Day is better for your homework

Groundhog Day is better for your homework: We adapt to attentional conflict but only if nothing changes William James famously postulated that the world presents itself as “one great blooming, buzzing confusion” to an infant, whose senses are constantly assaulted by visual, auditory, tactile and olfactory stimuli. To make sense of the world requires attention, […]

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Is iron stronger than copper? When data and theories tell different stories about forgetting

We forget. Whether we trade the name of a fish for the name of a student, or whether we eventually forget the name of the U.S. President, the loss of information from memory is nearly always unavoidable. The reasons that underlie forgetting are, however, still debated. One putative mechanism that has attracted considerable attention is the idea […]

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Processing Gefühle in your second language

Currently the EU is officially working and speaking in 24 different languages: Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish. Growing up in such an environment by necessity leads to a great number of people speaking more than just […]

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