Embodied Cognition Perspective Research Articles

Relationship between body involvement and post-trip behavioral intention in sports tourism: an embodied cognition perspective

PurposeBased on the theory of embodied cognition, this study uses the Mehrabian–Rusell model to explore the influence of tourists’ body involvement during sports vacations on their post-trip behavioral intention, as well as the regulatory role of tourism involvement in this process.Design/methodology/approachStructural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses, mediating effects and moderating effects. The data were collected through an online survey of 631 visitors to sports tourism destinations in China.FindingsProprioception and kinesthesia in sports tourism activities can affect post-trip behavioral intention through body arousal and tourism satisfaction. Tourism involvement positively regulates the influence of body embeddedness and body arousal on tourism satisfaction. Furthermore, a “threshold effect” exists in the emotional effect of tourists’ body involvement.Practical implicationsTo develop sports tourism, it is important to take the following steps: create multi-sensory stimulation to improve the physical participation of tourists in sports tourism activities, design sports resorts that cater to people of different age groups, evaluate tourists’ satisfaction and use their feedback to make continuous improvements, improve the basic convenience services offered at sports resorts, use social media to display the unique physical environment and others characteristics of sports destinations to expand popularity.Originality/valueThis study constructs a conceptual model of the influence mechanism of tourists’ body involvement on post-trip behavioral intention to present valuable insights that could help promote the sustainable development of sports tourism.

From Sensory Experience to Revisit Intentions: An Embodied Cognition Perspective on Replica Tourism

This study explores the impact of sensory experiences on tourists’ experiences at replica destinations, aiming to clarify the intrinsic influence mechanisms between sensory experiences, perceived authenticity, well-being, and the intention to revisit. Utilizing embodied cognition theory, this study empirically tested its application through data collected via an online survey of tourists who visited a well-known replica destination, Window of the World in Shenzhen, within three months prior to completing the survey. The findings reveal that tourists’ sensory experiences, except for smell and taste, are directly related to the intention to revisit. Positive sensory experiences influence perceived authenticity and well-being, subsequently leading to an increased intention to revisit. By providing empirical evidence on tourists’ sensory experiences at replica destinations in different cultural contexts, this study enriches the existing body of research and broadens the scope of replica tourism studies. In addition, an increasing number of replica tourism destinations play an important role in protecting traditional tourist destinations, especially historical sites. This study provides valuable insights for the future development of replica tourism destinations in promoting sustainable tourism. At the same time, this study extends the application of embodied cognition theory to replica tourism, contributing to theoretical development and offering new insights into the role of sensory experiences in shaping tourist behavior.

Optimal design of informal green spaces in cold-region settlements: an embodied cognition perspective

ABSTRACT With the development of cities in cold regions, the demand for green spaces surpasses what formal areas like city parks can provide. This study employs an embodied cognition approach, based on the valence-arousal dimension model, to assess the emotional responses of residents in cold regions to informal green spaces (IGSs) from both subjective and objective perspectives. The findings reveal that IGSs positively influence the emotional valence and arousal of residents. The study also examines how different sample characteristics impact these emotional responses, confirming that IGSs in cold regions enhance residents’ emotional states both subjectively and objectively. The manner in which these characteristics influence residents’ emotional responses is investigated by comparing various IGSs with distinct characteristics. Key factors such as aspect ratio, size, vegetation layout, and maintenance significantly influence emotional valence, while vegetation type notably affects emotional arousal. This research underscores the importance of IGSs in cold regions for fostering “urban green space equity”. It provides theoretical guidance for designing these spaces, focusing on subjective perceptions and objective measurements for enhancing emotional well-being in cold urban environments. The methods and results of this study can provide a workable reference for future research and for urban planners tasked with designing green spaces.

Exploring the effect of VR-enhanced teaching aids in STEAM education: An embodied cognition perspective

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of Physical Teaching Aids (PTAs) and VR-Enhanced Teaching Aids (VETAs) on students’ learning performance, attitudes, and classroom interactions in a STEAM course. A quasi-experimental study was conducted with a total of 85 fifth-grade students, 42 in the treatment group and 43 in the control group. The students in the treatment group reported a high level of acceptance of the VETAs in the post-course interview. The Lag Sequential Analysis results indicated that the use of VETAs improved students' learning performance and made the classroom more learner-centered than those who were facilitated with PTAs. In the treatment group, students were able to investigate problems more actively, practice and innovate more interactively, and achieve deeper learning. The current study further elaborates on the reasons and summarizes the mechanism of VETAs supporting the perceptual field in STEAM education.

Schema Therapy: The Healthy Adult Meets Sherlock Holmes—An Enactivist and Embodied Cognition Perspective of Metaphor

Schema Therapy: The Healthy Adult Meets Sherlock Holmes—An Enactivist and Embodied Cognition Perspective of Metaphor

Space Metaphor in the Representation of Concrete and Abstract Words: An Embodied Cognition Perspective

Research on embodied cognition is becoming increasingly crucial as society develops. To study embodied spatial metaphor, this study examines the relationship between perceived distance and understanding of abstract and concrete words. Concrete words are usually considered to be relatively close to peoples lives, while abstract words are not. Thirty-five participants between the ages of 18 and 29 participated in the study. They were asked to make either concrete or abstract responses quickly and accurately to words displayed on a screen, where words were presented to be either distance or in close proximity to the participant. The response time for correct answers was recorded. The results show that the reaction time of the abstract words with a short distance is not significantly longer than that of the abstract words with a long distance, while the results of the concrete words are consistent. According to the results, it can conclude that there is no significant relationship between spatial metaphor and the nature of words.

Young Children’s Experience in Unplugged Activities About Computational Thinking: From an Embodied Cognition Perspective

Young Children’s Experience in Unplugged Activities About Computational Thinking: From an Embodied Cognition Perspective

Does bullying reduce occupational commitment in hospitality employees? Mixed empirical evidence from resource conservation theory and embodied cognition perspectives

The hospitality industry receives the most bullying and harassment claims, and hotel employee bullying has created some damaging psychosocial risks. using a mixed research approach, this study integrates resource conservation and embodied cognitive theories within a stimulate-organism-response framework to explore the relationship between hotel employees' experiences of bullying and their occupational commitment, and underlying mechanisms of sensory and psychological cognition. This study qualitatively examines the inner framework of employees' bodily sensory perceptions, resource dynamics allocation mechanism, and key influencing factors and dimensions of occupational commitment, and quantitatively verifies the effect of guest bullying on occupational commitment. The findings show that guest bullying and occupational stigma perception positively influenced occupational commitment. Organizational resources positive moderate the relationship between guest bullying and occupational commitment. The study highlights the mechanisms associated with employees' ability to maintain high occupational commitment despite bullying, underlines the driven and self-motivated nature of individual psychological and behavioral adjustment in a specific cultural context, and unveils the inherent "black box" of organizational behavior under the embodied cognition perspective.

A Non-Randomized Pilot Study on the Benefits of Baby Swimming on Motor Development.

According to the concept of “embodied cognition”, motor development should not be considered distant from cognitive and language processes. Motor development is essential in the first 1000 days of life, as the child explores and learns new information from the environment. Among motor activities, baby swimming allows infants to make movements that they are not able to perform on solid ground. Since movements become slower in water, the sensory perception of these movements is amplified. However, the relationship between early swimming experience and motor development has not yet been investigated. Therefore, we carried out a pilot study with the aim of exploring this relationship for the first time. To that end, 32 infants aged from 6 to 10 months were recruited. The Peabody Developmental Motor Scale-2 was used to assess motor abilities in healthy children who regularly carried out aquatic courses compared to children who never attended swimming practice. Independent-sample t-tests showed significant differences in favor of the group that performed infant swimming activities on measures of reflexes (t = −2.2, p < 0.05), grasping (t = −3.8, p < 0.001), fine-motor quotient (t = −3.4, p < 0.01) and total-motor quotient (t = −2.4, p < 0.05). Overall, in line with the embodied cognition perspective, these preliminary results are encouraging and allow us to investigate how motor development influences later language development.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder from an Embodied Cognition Perspective.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is characterized by problems of control over behavior and cognition. Although almost all of the studies on pathogenesis of OCD point out fronto-striatal dysfunction, it is still not possible to reveal mechanisms to explain the entire clinical course of OCD through these circuits. A more holistic explanation can be given through the Embodied Cognition (EC) perspective, which suggests that the alteration/dysfunction of low-level sensory-motor process may appear as a multifarious extent of dysfunction of high-level cognitive processes. Fronto-striatal circuits play fundamental role in behavioral control. These circuits also have a central role for the feed-forward motor control (FFMC). In FFMC, the internal model of movement is driven by efference copies as templates for motor behavior, without being adjusted by sensory information. If impairment of low-level sensory-motor processing is crucial to occurrence of compulsions, one possible hypothesis about this impairment is the problem which emerges from occurrence of efference copy in FFMC. On the other hand, the efference copy has also pivotal role for subject's feeling of the agency of an action. Therefore, there may be role of failure in successfully reproduction of the efference copy in the background of subjects' experience of losing control on compulsive behaviors. In this paper, we will discuss how the embodied cognition (EC) perspective which can be one of the biological bases of computationalism, which brings neuroscientific explanations on the functioning of nervous system to a more symbolic perspective, may contribute to our understanding of etiopathogenesis of OCD. In this perspective, our method will be to integrate the theoretical basis provided by EC perspective to the current models for OCD, rather than falsifying them.

Home is restoration: Towards a health-based model of the importance of home for survivors of natural disasters

Something fundamental for health lies in the relationship between individuals and their homes, and it is missed by entire populations after destructive natural disasters. Although previous research has verified the importance of home to the psychological and physiological well-being of adults in normal conditions, natural disaster recovery plans still ignore the impact that recreating a sense of home in transitional and permanent relocation environments can have in the relief of stress and depression of the displaced people. This exploratory study draws upon the theory of embodied cognition to explain the interrelationship between home environments and physical and psychological restoration. Through a phenomenologically based analysis of in-depth interviews with five survivors of the 2018 Paradise Camp Fire, a review of the literature on home, and empirical evidence and theory from the cognitive sciences, an enriched definition of home is formulated on the basis that the pleasant feelings of home are a result of the activation of the parasympathetic nervous system, a physiological restorative process that is associated with environmental cues and is impaired in no-home environments. The provisional findings of this study suggest that improving access to suitable homes can be an effective non-invasive measure to prevent long-term negative health effects of relocation after a natural disaster, and that displaced individuals should always be involved in the decision-making about relocation and rebuilding. For that purpose, this study proposes a thirteen-topic survey to identify the themes that can provide a sense of home to each individual affected by displacement. • Natural disaster survivors interviewed about the meaning of home. • Hypothesized that feelings of home activate the parasympathetic nervous system. • Home is restoration from an embodied cognition perspective. • Disaster recovery policy could prevent the negative health effects of relocation.

Translation/Interpreting psychological mechanism as embodied bilingual processing

Abstract Based on the psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic research on bilingualism, this paper firstly discusses three fundamental models and relevant central issues involved in the bilingual processing of interpreting: the selective and non-selective feature of bilingual access and control, the serial and parallel view of bilingual processing, and the coordination view of serial and parallel procedure of bilingual information processing, with the dual purpose of explicating the bilingual processing and cognitive control mechanism in the interpreting process and paving the way for further explanation of the embodied nature of bilingual processing in interpreting from the embodied cognition perspective. Then with the two aspects of processing mechanism and neurolinguistic evidence, it elaborates how the interpreter’s embodied experience and skills in the profession, as a part of cognitive resources, play crucial roles in different levels of cognitive processing which coordinates the serial and parallel processing in the interpreting process. Lastly, this paper argues for viewing the translating process likewise as embodied bilingual processing using a brief comparison between translating and interpreting with a focus on the embodied nature of bilingual processing in their respective processes.

An Embodied Cognition Perspective on the Role of Interoception in the Development of the Minimal Self.

Interoception is an often neglected but crucial aspect of the human minimal self. In this perspective, we extend the embodiment account of interoceptive inference to explain the development of the minimal self in humans. To do so, we first provide a comparative overview of the central accounts addressing the link between interoception and the minimal self. Grounding our arguments on the embodiment framework, we propose a bidirectional relationship between motor and interoceptive states, which jointly contribute to the development of the minimal self. We present empirical findings on interoception in development and discuss the role of interoception in the development of the minimal self. Moreover, we make theoretical predictions that can be tested in future experiments. Our goal is to provide a comprehensive view on the mechanisms underlying the minimal self by explaining the role of interoception in the development of the minimal self.

Neuromuscular Diseases Affect Number Representation and Processing: An Exploratory Study.

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) and Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) both are rare genetic neuromuscular diseases with progressive loss of motor ability. The neuromotor developmental course of those diseases is well documented. In contrast, there is only little evidence about characteristics of general and specific cognitive development. In both conditions the final motor outcome is characterized by an inability to move autonomously: children with SMA never accomplish independent motoric exploration of their environment, while children with DMD do but later lose this ability again. These profound differences in developmental pathways might affect cognitive development of SMA vs. DMD children, as cognition is shaped by individual motor experiences. DMD patients show impaired executive functions, working memory, and verbal IQ, whereas only motor ability seems to be impaired in SMA. Advanced cognitive capacity in SMA may serve as a compensatory mechanism for achieving in education, career progression, and social satisfaction. This study aimed to relate differences in basic numerical concepts and arithmetic achievement in SMA and DMD patients to differences in their motor development and resulting sensorimotor and environmental experiences. Horizontal and vertical spatial-numerical associations were explored in SMA/DMD children ranging between 6 and 12 years through the random number generation task. Furthermore, arithmetic skills as well as general cognitive ability were assessed. Groups differed in spatial number processing as well as in arithmetic and domain-general cognitive functions. Children with SMA showed no horizontal and even reversed vertical spatial-numerical associations. Children with DMD on the other hand revealed patterns in spatial numerical associations comparable to healthy developing children. From the embodied Cognition perspective, early sensorimotor experience does play a role in development of mental number representations. However, it remains open whether and how this becomes relevant for the acquisition of higher order cognitive and arithmetic skills.

Embodied Cognition and Motor Activity

The objective of this paper is to review the main studies carried out on the theme of the embodied cognition, outlining the link between neuroscience and motor and sports activities in the most general sense possible. According to the embodied cognition perspective, cognitive processes are not limited to operations that take place within the cognitive system, but include broader body structures and processes of interaction with the environment (Lakoff, Johnson, 1999, Noe, 2004, Chemero, 2009). The embodied cognition approach states that mind and body are not separate and distinct, as Descartes mistakenly thought (Damasio, 1995). Therefore, by merging the studies in the literature in homogeneous sets in terms of research methodology, chronology and points of view on the relationship between embodied cognition and motor activity, this research will attempt to clarify and expand the state of the art on the chosen topic, highlighting some limitations of the literature and imagining future opportunities and directions of the research itself.

Assessing kinetic meaning of music and dance via deep cross-modal retrieval

Music semantics is embodied, in the sense that meaning is biologically mediated by and grounded in the human body and brain. This embodied cognition perspective also explains why music structures modulate kinetic and somatosensory perception. We leverage this aspect of cognition, by considering dance as a proxy for music perception, in a statistical computational model that learns semiotic correlations between music audio and dance video. We evaluate the ability of this model to effectively capture underlying semantics in a cross-modal retrieval task. Quantitative results, validated with statistical significance testing, strengthen the body of evidence for embodied cognition in music and show the model can recommend music audio for dance video queries and vice-versa.

Embodied negation and levels of concreteness: A TMS study on German and Italian language processing

According to the embodied cognition perspective, linguistic negation may block the motor simulations induced by language processing. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was applied to the left primary motor cortex (hand area) of monolingual Italian and German healthy participants during a rapid serial visual presentation of sentences from their own language. In these languages, the negative particle is located at the beginning and at the end of the sentence, respectively. The study investigated whether the interruption of the motor simulation processes, accounted for by reduced motor evoked potentials (MEPs), takes place similarly in two languages differing on the position of the negative marker. Different levels of sentence concreteness were also manipulated to investigate if negation exerts generalized effects or if it is affected by the semantic features of the sentence. Our findings indicate that negation acts as a block on motor representations, but independently from the language and words concreteness level.

Welcoming host, cozy house? The impact of service attitude on sensory experience

Shared accommodations (e.g., Airbnb) are growing rapidly with ever-increasing attention given to the features of the home decoration style and a homely atmosphere. Similar to an old saying, “Love me, Love my dog”, it has been established that the perception of hosts’ service quality is integrated with customers’ evaluations of house amenities. However, little is known about the influence of service attitude (how it is perceived by guests) on customers’ sensory experience, which is key to their loyalty and satisfaction. Through a pilot study analyzing guest houses’ online reviews, two experiments as well as a survey, service attitude (i.e., enthusiasm and hospitality) was found to be positively associated with customers’ sensory experience. In this process, home-like feelings acted as the mediator, sincerity served as a moderator, and only sincere enthusiasm and hospitality helped promote the home-like feeling for customers. This study sheds light on the customer sensory experience management of shared accommodations from the embodied cognition perspective.

Movement Matters! Understanding the Developmental Trajectory of Embodied Planning.

Human motor skills are exceptional compared to other species, no less than their cognitive skills. In this perspective paper, we suggest that “movement matters!,” implying that motor development is a crucial driving force of cognitive development, much more impactful than previously acknowledged. Thus, we argue that to fully understand and explain developmental changes, it is necessary to consider the interaction of motor and cognitive skills. We exemplify this argument by introducing the concept of “embodied planning,” which takes an embodied cognition perspective on planning development throughout childhood. From this integrated, comprehensive framework, we present a novel climbing paradigm as the ideal testbed to explore the development of embodied planning in childhood and across the lifespan. Finally, we outline future research directions and discuss practical applications of the work on developmental embodied planning for robotics, sports, and education.

Where’s the body? Reconsidering the concept of pedagogical content knowledge through research in music education with Dutch specialist preschool music teachers

AbstractThis article reports an investigation into the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) of Dutch specialist preschool music teachers with regard to teaching and learning rhythm skills from an embodied cognition perspective. An embodied cognition perspective stresses the intimate relationship between body, mind and environment. Through stimulated recall interviews, video analysis tasks, notebooks and semi-structured interviews, the PCK of six music teachers was explored. Regarding the content, a new form of bodily based PCK was found in the data: instructional gestures, representational gestures and guiding gestures that facilitate the learning of rhythm skills of preschoolers. Regarding its nature, this study demonstrated that the music teacher’s PCK presents itself as a multimodal form of knowing, distributed over language, sound, gestures, body positioning and physical actions. This study raises the question whether the body is marginalised in current conceptualisations of PCK.