Search

Growing evidence has revealed the crucial role of motor simulation and spatial perspective-taking in action language. However, there is still a lack of understanding of how motor and spatial processes interact when there are multiple actors involved, and if embodied processes are consistent across different cultures. To address this gap, we examined the interaction between motor simulation and spatial perspective-taking in action-sentences comprehension, along with the consistency of embodied processes across cultures. We collected data from Italian and US English speakers using an online sentence-picture verification task. The participants completed four conditions: two congruent (i.e., the participant is the agent in the sentence and the photo; the agent is someone else interacting with the participant in both the sentence and the picture) and two incongruent (i.e., the agents of the sentence and the picture do not match). The results show that when the perspective of the picture matched that described in the sentence-processing reaction times (RTs) were faster than in the incongruent conditions. In the congruent conditions where the agent is someone else, RTs were slower compared to the condition where the participant is the agent. This has been interpreted as claiming that motor simulation and perspective-taking are independent processes interacting during sentence comprehension (e.g., motor simulation is always run in the role of the agent, but we can adopt multiple perspectives depending on the pronouns and the contextual cues). Furthermore, Bayesian analysis provided evidence that embodied processing of action language entwines a common mechanism, suggesting cross-cultural consistency of embodied processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitions about one's physical environment have a clear psychological impact on inhabitants. However, judgments of a setting's spaciousness have been shown to be based not solely on the dimensions of the enclosure but also on a number of seemingly incidental environmental properties. Nevertheless, a theoretical integration and explanation of these various effects has been lacking. Across five experiments conducted in the laboratory and in virtual reality, we test an affordance-based account, which proposes that impressions of spaciousness are influenced by the wealth of behavioral opportunities offered by the environment. These experiments test how the functional arrangement of furniture (Experiments 1 and 2) and the priming of particular behaviors (Experiments 3a, 3b, and 3c) affect perceivers' spatial impressions of the environment. These findings emphasize that cognitions about spaciousness are determined not by a passive calculation of area but are instead tied to its ability to facilitate physical activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article intends to build bridges between two recent trends within Critical Discourse Studies as exemplified by cognitive linguistics and multimodality. Thus, the postulates of spatial cognition will be followed to do an analysis of the musical re-contextualization of Barack Obama's New Hampshire 2008 speech. In Will.i.am's music video ‘Yes, we can’, uploaded on YouTube under the username WeCan08, we can listen to a song whose lyrics are made of different extracts from Obama's speech. This type of communicative strategy results in a multiple re-contextualization of the political speech. The effectiveness of the musical video can be explained by identifying it as a blended mental space incorporating elements of the text-world, the music-world and visual-world. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent studies reveal that children can solve proportional reasoning problems presented with continuous amounts that enable intuitive strategies by around 6 years of age but have difficulties with problems presented with discrete units that tend to elicit explicit count-and-match strategies until at least 10 years of age. The current study tests whether performance on discrete unit problems might be improved by prompting intuitive reasoning with continuous-format problems. Participants were kindergarten, second-grade, and fourth-grade students (N = 194) assigned to either an experimental condition, where they were given continuous amount proportion problems before discrete unit proportion problems, or a control condition, where they were given all discrete unit problems. Results of a three-way mixed-model analysis of variance examining school grade, experimental condition, and block of trials indicated that fourth-grade students in the experimental condition outperformed those in the control condition on discrete unit problems in the second half of the experiment, but kindergarten and second-grade students did not differ by condition. This suggests that older children can be prompted to use intuitive strategies to reason proportionally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Format of design information has little effect on mental workload. • Spatial cognitive capabilities do not influence hazard recognition skill. • A series of design for safety reviews were conducted across the United States. • 117 participants explored a mixture of design information to identify hazards. • A novel approach to hazard recognition experimentation is presented. Research suggests safety reviews are important for Construction Hazard Prevention through Design implementation. Various visual stimuli exist when performing safety reviews and may affect the mental workload of Construction Hazard Prevention through Design tasks. However, no research addresses how spatial cognitive capability, or the format of visual stimuli may affect the mental workload of hazard recognition tasks. To address this gap, safety reviews were conducted across the United States to explore the association of spatial cognitive capability and hazard recognition performance and the variability of the mental workload of hazard recognition tasks across various formats of engineering design. In total, 117 participants were provided a mixture of design information including: computer aided design, computerized visualizations, and a combination of the two and asked to identify hazards for three construction activities. Participants spatial cognitive capability and mental workload were assessed. Multiple linear regression was used to measure the association among these variables. The results indicate no association between spatial cognitive capability and hazard recognition performance. Additionally, the format of design had no effect on mental workload. The results conflict with the prevailing belief that computerized visualizations are superior to computer aided design for reducing the mental workload of Construction Hazard Prevention through Design tasks. However, a demographic analysis revealed that construction experience and time spent in hazard recognition trials predicts hazard recognition performance. Simply, skill in a hazard recognition task depends more on the experience and diligence of the practitioner rather than the format of the design information, task demand, or spatial cognitive capability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kant argued that Euclidean geometry is synthesized on the basis of an a priori intuition of space. This proposal inspired much behavioral research probing whether spatial navigation in humans and animals conforms to the predictions of Euclidean geometry. However, Euclidean geometry also includes concepts that transcend the perceptible, such as objects that are infinitely small or infinitely large, or statements of necessity and impossibility. We tested the hypothesis that certain aspects of nonperceptible Euclidian geometry map onto intuitions of space that are present in all humans, even in the absence of formal mathematical education. Our tests probed intuitions of points, lines, and surfaces in participants from an indigene group in the Amazon, the Mundurucu, as well as adults and age-matched children controls from the United States and France and younger US children without education in geometry. The responses of Mundurucu adults and children converged with that of mathematically educated adults and children and revealed an intuitive understanding of essential properties of Euclidean geometry. For instance, on a surface described to them as perfectly planar, the Mundurucu's estimations of the internal angles of triangles added up to ~180 degrees, and when asked explicitly, they stated that there exists one single parallel line to any given line through a given point. These intuitions were also partially in place in the group of younger US participants. We conclude that, during childhood, humans develop geometrical intuitions that spontaneously accord with the principles of Euclidean geometry, even in the absence of training in mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population counts and longitude and latitude coordinates were estimated for the 50 largest cities in the United States by computational linguistic techniques and by human participants. The mathematical technique Latent Semantic Analysis applied to newspaper texts produced similarity ratings between the 50 cities that allowed for a multidimensional scaling (MDS) of these cities. MDS coordinates correlated with the actual longitude and latitude of these cities, showing that cities that are located together share similar semantic contexts. This finding was replicated using a first-order co-occurrence algorithm. The computational estimates of geographical location as well as population were akin to human estimates. These findings show that language encodes geographical information that language users in turn may use in their understanding of language and the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]