Embodiment and Human Development

Embodiment in early development.

'Embodiment' has come to represent the many ways in which the body influences the functioning of the brain and cognitive processing. This article on embodiment and early development reviews several examples of studies demonstrating embodiment in cognitive tasks. Our overall message is that what the body does during cognitive processing influences cognition in important ways. This might be espec...

The relationship between human agency and embodiment.

Humans regularly feel a sense of agency (SoA) over events where the causal link between action and outcome is extremely indirect. We have investigated how intermediate (here, a robotic hand) events that intervene between action and outcome may alter SoA, using intentional binding measures. The robotic hand either performed the same movement as the participant (active congruent), or performed a ...

Human, Environment and Sustainable Development

Commentary: First-Order Embodiment, Second-Order Embodiment, Third-Order Embodiment

The framework of first-, second-, and third-order embodiment (1-3E; Metzinger, 2014) was developed for exploring how phenomenal properties are physically and computationally grounded. Metzinger’s goal for 1-3E is to show how the experience of being a self (i.e., phenomenal selfhood) is generated within an embodied system and thus to embed his self-model theory (Metzinger, 2004) in the context o...

Cognitive and Social Development of Proof through Embodiment, Symbolism & Formalism

Proof is a construct of mathematical communities over many generations and is introduced to new generations as they develop cognitively in a social context. Here I present a practical framework for this development in simple terms that nevertheless has deep origins. The framework builds on an analysis of the growth of mathematical ideas based on genetic facilities set-before birth. It unfolds a...