Enactive Paradigm Research Articles

Performing for Better Communication: Creativity, Cognitive-Emotional Skills and Embodied Language in Primary Schools.

While the diversity and complexity of the links between creativity and emotional skills as well as their effects on cognitive processes are now established, few approaches to implementing them in schools have been evaluated. Within the framework of the enactive paradigm, which considers the complexity and dynamics of language as a cognitive process, we study how an approach based on performative theatre can synergistically stimulate creativity (artistic, bodily and linguistic), emotional skills (identifying and understanding emotions) and executive functions (especially inhibition, cognitive flexibility and emotional control), all as components defined in the context of oral communication. Stimulating this synergy in the context of foreign language teaching may be especially beneficial for children with communication disorders. This paper presents the first results of the CELAVIE pilot study (Creativity, Empathy and Emotions in Language learning with Autism for an Inclusive Education) through a case study of a pupil with a neurodevelopmental disorder included in a 4th-grade class. The results show a progression in oral communication in English as a Foreign Language (EFL), in emotional skills and creativity.

Reconceptualizing Somatic Dysfunction in the Light of a Neuroaesthetic Enactive Paradigm

Background: Palpatory findings are considered a central element of osteopathic practice, especially when associated with a patient's altered regulative functions than with named somatic dysfunctions. Although osteopathic theories for somatic dysfunction could be plausible, the clinical applicability of the concept is debated, especially because it is largely related to simple cause-effect models of osteopathic care. In contrast to a linear kind of diagnosis of a "tissue as a producer of symptoms", this perspective article aims to provide a conceptual and operational framework in which the somatic dysfunction evaluation process is seen as a neuroaesthetic (en)active encounter between osteopath and patient. Subsections relevant to the subject: To summarize all concepts of the hypothesis, the enactive neuroaesthetics principles are proposed as a critical foundation for the osteopathic assessment and treatment of the person, specifically addressing a new paradigm for somatic dysfunction. Conclusions, and future directions: The present perspective article represents a proposition to blend technical rationality informed by neurocognitive and social sciences, and professional artistry clinical experience informed by traditional tenets, to overcome the controversy around somatic dysfunction, rather than dismissing the concept.

Enactive Experience for Streaming Media Services

Since the beginning of humankind, storytelling enabled people to understand and shape their impressions of reality. Depicted by Walter R. Fisher, the narrative paradigm encounters the ubiquitous computing dimension, as proposed by Mark Weiser (Fisher 1984, Weiser 1991), that results in the interdisciplinary field of Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN). Departing from the first text-based experimentation in the late 1970s, IDN can be considered a vibrant field wherein different forms of interactive artifacts derived such as Hypertext Fiction, Interactive Installations, Video Game Narrative (Koenitz et al. 2015), and Enactive Cinema (Tikka 2006, 2008). IDN presents a field of inquiry prevailing for over three decades, but the question remains: is it supposed to be strictly entertainment or something else? In response, this paper explores the possibility of implementing an enactive paradigm to design a tailored experience for streaming media services, thus proposing a conceptual, methodological framework for designing a system to be prototyped and tested in accompanying research.

Exploring the notion of “from-within” through the concept of event

The target paper presents the foundations of the Course-of-Experience Framework, discussing a theoretical and methodological tool appropriate for addressing cognition in the wild and from-within. This commentary considers the meaning of from-within in this context. By relying on the enactive paradigm, the Course-of-Experience Framework focuses on singular experiences but does not take individuals as its starting point. Thus, from-within gains a very particular meaning that will be explored here through the concept of event, in Deleuzian terms, the event is neither subjective nor objective in the usual meaning of these words, even though it is a singularity, capable of producing both individual and collective effects. This concept prevents considering subjective experience as a property of individuals. The concept of event is valuable to elucidate the notion of “common experiential ground.”

Epilogue to “Questioning Life and Cognition” by John Stewart

In 2012, John Stewart contributed a book manuscript entitled “ Questioning Life and Cognition: Some Foundational Issues in the Paradigm of Enaction” to the Enaction Series in Online Collaborative Publishing, edited by Olivier Gapenne and Bruno Bachimont. Along with Mattéo Mossio, I was invited by Olivier to serve as a glossator of this text. The purpose was to thereby continue our long and fruitful dialogues with John that began when we were both students. I took advantage of the opportunity to also express my gratitude to John for his participation in that formative stage of my personal academic journey. My reflections were included as an epilogue to his book. In memoriam, the epilogue is reproduced in this report unchanged. I will always be grateful to John for making the research community of enaction feel like family to me and for helping me recognize that there is a place for my diverse interests in the continued pursuit of an academic career.

Expectation of being affected: an enactive perspective of spectators' expectations of contemporary dance

PurposeThis article examines how spectators describe their expectations of contemporary dance by referring to action. Through discussing a qualitative audience study, the article argues that spectators always have an expectation of being affected by performances they attend. This expectation can guide their interest in attending performances of certain genres instead of other possible ones on offer. Additionally, the article points out how spectators can actively manage their expectations in order to be affected.Design/methodology/approachThe study is based on 21 in-depth interviews with spectators at a dance venue, a company and a festival in Finland. The analysis of the interviews combines thematic analysis with metaphor analysis. Employing the paradigm of enaction and the concept of affordances, this article approaches expectations as embodied and dynamic, created in interactions between artists, producers and spectators.FindingsThe analysis shows that when speaking about their expectations of performances, spectators use bodily and spatial metaphors. Focusing on metaphors reveals how, for the spectators, performances afford a possibility for action that affects them. The interviewed spectators describe that contemporary dance is “not set in its ways”, and therefore it keeps them “awake” and their thoughts do “not fossilize”. This way, they understand contemporary dance as a genre that affords a possibility to be affected by allowing a freedom of own interpretation and surprising experiences if they desire such.Originality/valueConcentration on the metaphors of language offers a deeper understanding of the active nature of spectators' expectations. Understanding how spectators describe their expectations by referring to action that enables the shaping of their emotions and thoughts can help the development of arts marketing and audience engagement.

MÉTODO PARA EL DISEÑO DE PUESTOS DE TRABAJO PARA PERSONAS CON TRASTORNO DEL ESPECTRO AUTISTA EN LA INDUSTRIA 4.0

The increase of studies in recent years on Autism Spectrum Disorder and its employability, is an opportunity for research focused on social and occupational inclusion of this group. The lack of inclusive jobs for this population is partly due to the absence of frameworks, methodologies and tools that allow the development of solutions for their adaptation. The main contribution is focused on the development of a model for the design of jobs for the empowerment of workers and articulated from the enactive paradigm in the context of Vygotsky's Activity Theory (AT), Ashby Variety Law (VL) and, supported by the Design for X (DfX) with a proposal of application to a case study for the industry 4.0. The proposed case study focuses on the design for the adaptation of an accessible workplace within an aeronautical component manufacturing plant that incorporates workers with ASD, with the intention of promoting the socio-labour development and inclusion of these individuals in an industrial, technological and innovative environment. KeyWords: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD); inclusive workplace design; Activity Theory (AT); Required Variety Law (RVL); occupational environment; design for ASD 4.0; design for X (DfX).

Cognition distribuée et Cours d’action

The ‘distributed cognition’ research program, initiated by Edwin Hutchins, has contributed to the development of the ‘course of action’ research program from 1987 to the present day. Edwin Hutchins having recently recognized the close relationship between his latest research, developed in terms of embodied and distributed cognition, and that on the enaction paradigm, of which this ‘course of action’ research program is a part, the question now arises of the definition of an “augmented ‘course of action’ research program”. In relation to this enaction paradigm, such a program should go into greater depth and provide a new synthesis of the ‘distributed cognition’ research program’s past contributions to the ‘course of action’ research program and integrate its new contributions. This in-depth analysis, synthesis and renewal of the contributions to the ‘course of action’ research program are facilitated by the mutual contribution and addition of different theoretical and methodological results obtained by the two research programs over recent decades. In this paper we will present our personal view of the answer to this question.

Lenguas y lenguaje en un paradigma enactivo

En este artículo, sitúo el paradigma enactivo (Varela) en el centro de la corriente emergentista y muestro lo que lo diferencia de las perspectivas cognitivistas y conexionistas. La enacción, saca a la luz el papel del cuerpo en acción y de la percepción en la cognición, y atribuye un lugar primordial al acto de ‘lenguajear’ ligado al afecto en el desarrollo humano. Termino así con un esbozo de algunas implicaciones didácticas de este paradigma en la educación a las lenguas. Las aplicaciones precisas se pueden encontrar en las publicaciones de referencia.

Experiential Neurorehabilitation: A Neurological Therapy Based on the Enactive Paradigm.

With the arrival of the cognitive paradigm during the latter half of the last century, the theoretical and scientific bases of neurorehabilitation have been linked to the knowledge developed in cognitive neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience. Although the knowledge generated by these disciplines has made relevant contributions to neurological therapy, their theoretical premises may create limitations in therapeutic processes. The present manuscript has two main objectives: first, to explicitly set forth the theoretical bases of cognitive neurorehabilitation and critically analyze the repercussions that these premises have produced in clinical practice; and second, to propose the enactive paradigm to reinterpret perspectives on people with brain damage and their therapy (assessment and treatment). This analysis will show that (1) neurorehabilitation as a therapy underutilizes body-originated resources that aid in recovery from neurological sequelae (embrained therapy); (2) the therapeutic process is based exclusively on subpersonal explanation models (subpersonal therapy); and (3), neurorehabilitation does not take subjectivity of each person in their own recovery processes into account (anti-subjective therapy). Subsequently, and in order to attenuate or resolve the conception of embrained, subpersonal and anti-subjective therapy, I argue in support of incorporating the enactive paradigm in rehabilitation of neurological damage. It is proposed here under a new term, “experiential neurorehabilitation.” This proposal approaches neurological disease and its sequelae as alterations in dynamic interaction between the body structure and the environment in which the meaning of the experience is also altered. Therefore, when a person is not able to walk, remember the past, communicate a thought, or maintain efficient self-care, their impairments are not only a product of an alteration in a specific cerebral area or within information processing; rather, the sequelae of their condition stem from alterations in the whole living system and its dynamics with the environment. The objective of experiential neurorehabilitation is the recovery of the singular and concrete experience of the person, composed of physical and subjective life attributes.

Dynamics of Experience in a Learning Protocol: A Case Study in Climbing.

Many of the studies on motor learning have investigated the dynamics of learning behaviors and shown that the learning process is non-linear, self-organized, and situated. Aligned with this research trend, studies within the enactive paradigm focus on learners’ lived experience to understand how it shapes their intentions, actions, and perceptions. Thus, a joint analysis of experiential and behavioral assessments might help to explain the dynamics of learning (e.g., the transition between stable states). The aim of this case study was to analyze the dynamics of a beginner climber’s lived experience as his performance progressed (i.e., climbing fluency) during a learning protocol. The protocol comprised 10 climbing sessions over 5 weeks. During the sessions, the climber had to climb a “control route” (CR) (i.e., a route that never changed) and “variants” (i.e., novel routes, in which the spatial layout of the holds was modified). Phenomenological data were collected with self-confrontation interviews after each session. From the verbalizations, a thematic analysis of the climber’s intentions, actions, and perceptions was performed to detect the general dimensions of his experience. The behavioral data (the climber’s performance) were assessed using four indicators of climbing fluency: climbing time (CT), immobility ratio (IR), geometric index of entropy (GIE) of the hip trajectory, and the jerk. Our results highlighted the dynamics of the climber’s lived experience and performances in the unchanged and novel environments. The dynamics on the CR were characterized by four crucial episodes and the dynamics on the variants, by four ways of experiencing novelty. Our results are discussed around three points: (i) the climber’s definition of his enacted fluency in terms of intentions, actions, and perceptions; (ii) how the definition was identified through a dynamic phenomenological synthesis; and (iii) three effects that characterize the dynamics: challenge, metaphor, and a refinement in perceptions.

Enactive approach in sports pedagogy

The work is characterized as theoretical research aimed at the possibility of re-attributing to the educational relationship the original ability to elevate itself to an enactive function of the training processes for self-expression in the psychology of sports field, for the purpose of revealing self-awareness. We are indeed convinced that collaboration between sports philosophers, psychologists and pedagogists could produce a fruitful re-interpretation of the existing theoretical models in this area, advancing a high-profile understanding of the embodied sporting practices. In fact, by building on the ‘ radically enactive approach to cognition ’ we de-emphasize the role of mental representations and motor imagery training to characterize the ecological dimension of perceptual and motor skill acquisition. We also argue that the «enactive paradigm» could explain some kinds of high-level cognition, such as those that underlie transformative learning of some among the best performances in sports.

La liberté sémantique et le sens de la liberté : splendeurs et périls de la folie poétique. Compte rendu de l’ouvrage d’Elena Ciobanu « Sylvia Plath’s Poetry: The Metamorphoses of the Poetic Self » Iaşi, éditions Demiurg, 2009

Semantic Freedom and the Sense of Freedom : Splendors and Perils of Poetic Madness. This paper gathers a series of reflections on Elena Ciobanu’s monograph regarding Sylvia Plath’s work (Sylvia Plath’s Poetry : The Metamorphoses of the Poetic Self). Beyond the divisions between poetry and linguistics, this reading aims at identifying the added value of the book for Cognitive Sciences, by following the analytical frame proposed by its author, a frame which is discreetly connected to the paradigm of enaction. Based on textual examples from the American poet’s work, three issues are particularly approached : the construction of the self in discourse, the phenomenological unfolding of Plath’s poetic existence and the discursive embodiment that subtends her creativity. Mainly interpretative, the approach attempts to decipher a number of obscure regions of linguistic production in which certain altered states of consciousness find their way into artistic creativity. The paper also tries to identify the (probably major) risk of such semantic adventures that are often outside any intersubjective regulation.

Edward Gordon Craig’s Continuity of Life, Mind, and Spirit: a Cognitive View

In this article Maiya Murphy uses the enactive paradigm of cognition to take a fresh look at Edward Gordon Craig’s experiments in the theatre. By focusing on his obsession with movement, Maiya Murphy argues that an autopoietic conception of life can recategorize his problems with, ideas about, and experiments in the theatre as a coherent but multifaceted effort to create a very particular kind of cognitive engagement. She explores how enaction’s concept of the continuity of life and mind can map out a meaningful logic embedded in Craig’s intuitions about the connections between cognition, aesthetic experience, epistemology, and ontology. She also considers how the many media in which he worked and his interest in Asian arts – along with his major concepts such as the übermarionette and the kinetic stage – can be seen as attempts to think through theatre as an embodied and emergent event that is at once concrete, aesthetic, cognitive, and metaphysical. Finally, she traces the philosophical heritages that gave Craig his frameworks for understanding movement, arguing that his limitations and frustrations were fundamentally philosophical. Maiya Murphy is an Assistant Professor in the Theatre Programme at the National University of Singapore and makes theatre with her movementbased collective, Autopoetics. She is author of Enacting Lecoq: Movement in Theatre, Cognition, and Life (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), and of essays in Theatre Survey and The Routledge Companion to Jacques Lecoq, among others.

Spór o depresję. Czy fenomenologicznie zorientowana filozofia psychiatrii rozwiąże problemy psychiatrii redukcjonistycznej?

Celem artykułu jest zarysowanie sporu dotyczącego trudności w diagnozowaniu, definiowaniu i leczeniu depresji toczącego się w ramach redukcjonistycznej psychiatrii biologicznej, a także odpowiedź na pytanie, czy nowe podejście do zaburzeń psychicznych oferowane przez filozofów psychiatrii wywodzących się z nurtu fenomenologicznego i paradygmatu ucieleśnionego poznania rozwiązuje owe trudności. Problematyczne zagadnienia związane ściśle z depresją przedstawiam w kontekście głównych wskazywanych obecnie problemów psychiatrii redukcjonistycznej. Po tym wprowadzeniu prezentuję enaktywistyczne, fenomenologiczne i ucieleśnione koncepcje dotyczące depresji, w tym terapii depresji. Na koniec rozważam, na ile owe koncepcje istotnie wykraczają poza nurty już obecne w psychiatrii. Wskazuję również, pod jakimi względami omawiane koncepcje w filozofii psychiatrii mogą okazać się pożyteczne, nawet jeśli z różnych względów nie rozwiązują wielu ze wskazanych problemów psychiatrii redukcjonistycznej.

Motion events assessed through the cognitive paradigm and the enactive pattern: two complementary approaches

This article reports the results of a corpus-based investigation, which evaluates the way French and English native speakers depict motion events. Space markers’ distribution (prepositions, particles, etc.) is here assessed through the insertion of the selected items in French and English depictions. The inclusion of both languages’ space markers is scrutinized within French and English reports – both languages’ syntactic patterns illustrating the Talmian typology, which opposes English as a satellite-framed language to French as a verb-framed language. According to the hypothesis of this work, when one individual is made to describe some other individual’s motion experience, the linguistic structuring of her report is likely to be influenced by the physical activity she goes through before the descriptive task. This assumption implies that depicting identical phenomena can present language differences, if the speaker goes through a kinesthetic or a static physical performance before delivering her/his report. To test this hypothesis, two groups of speakers are interviewed and they are submitted to distinct sensorimotor constraints before describing the spatial progress of some other individual in the experimental scene. The individual’s spatial navigation to be described is identical in both groups. Through the non-linguistic variable of this investigation, the impact of speakers’ kinesthetic and stationary processes on the linguistic data collected is evaluated, hence assessing the potential relationships between two kinds of phenomena – linguistic and kinesthetic ones. Language is here apprehended through the enactive paradigm, according to which the experiential and sensorimotor dimensions contribute to the structuring of linguistic meaning.

La linguistique, un modèle à deux faces

Linguistics can benefit from an accurate treatment of enaction halfway between embodiment and extended mind by considering the influence of the world on the language-mind (as embodiment does), on the one side, and the influence of the language-mind on the world (as extended mind does), on the other side. Unfortunately both approaches follow opposite directions. Thus, linguistics requires an adequate formalism in order to successfully approach such a two-sided situation. The paper supports the idea that topological space helps to formalize the enactive paradigm required by linguistic science.

Du languaging au sens linguistique

From Languaging to Linguistic Meaning. Enactive cognition rejects the notion of representation as an explanatory principle of cognitive activity. This immediately poses a problem for the study of human language, which is usually understood as the study of the relationships between symbolic forms, individual thought and a world of local perception and general knowledge. This study explores how the notion of linguistic meaning can be revised within the enactive paradigm and without presupposing the notions of world and thought as autonomous material and spiritual entities without a genesis of their own. It begins with languaging as energeia and embodied, interactive and situated activity, and details its contribution to the constitution of the experience of ordinary life as a production of meaning and empirical world, with or without the help of actual speech. It clarifies the difference between the analysis of language by linguistics, which views it as formal systems and objects, and the enactive approach, which considers it as an embodied and situated process. It proposes that because of this grounding, linguistic meaning must be viewed as an emerging and distinct phenomenon, which can be either merged with the immediate situation by its pragmatic role, or distinguished from it as an autonomous semantic creation ; and it introduces a typology of classes of linguistic meaning according to their degree of relative inscription or autonomy and how speaking subjects reflect upon it. It specifies how certain linguistic components of speech and discourse (syntax, prosody, lexicon, grammatical morphs), redefined as processes, participate in the constitution of meaning, and sketches out perspectives in linguistic typology. The conclusion elucidates the meaning of languaging as a vector of coevolution linking the species to its environment through language, languages and discourse.

Entre je, jeu et jeux : écoute polysensorielle des langues pour une pédagogie énactive

All Ears : Listening from Within and Without. A Polysensory Ëxperience of Language Perception for an Enactive Pedagogy. This article presents the design and analysis of a polysensory listening experience of different languages. Combining sensory design, phenomenology and language education, this research draws on the enaction paradigm. The objective of the authors is twofold : to understand the nature and structures of transmodal perception of unknown languages and to prepare a novel educational approach to sensory awareness to foreign languages. The article will explain the origin of the project as well as its theoretical framework and the foundations that dictated the aesthetic and didactic choices for the video used as a primer within the experiment. Finally, the authors share findings that suggest that inhabitual ways of listening to familiar and unfamiliar languages result in emotional filters as well as cognitive and attentional oscillations.

Clelia Falletti, Gabriele Sofia, and Victor Jacono, eds., Theatre and Cognitive Neuroscience

This collection includes essays on spatial perception, mirror neurons, the enaction paradigm, and theatrical techniques that aid people with mental and/or physical disabilities. It lacks clear overarching goals and often falls into unexamined assumptions about theatre and speculations about cognitive realities. Nonetheless, several essays advance empirical research on theatre.