The Thinking Hand: Embodiment of Tool Use, Social Cognition and Metaphorical Thinking and Implications for Learning Design

(2014) The thinking hand: Embodiment of tool use, social cognition and metaphorical thinking and implications for learning design. Introduction In this paper we present an evolutionary and embodied account for the co-emergence of diverse skills central to our thinking and discuss implications for learning design. Our goal is to provide a connected picture for embodied cognition that spans across multiple domains of human cognition; one that goes beyond the simple formalism of embodied cognition as motor activity having some form of influence on thinking. Embodied cognition is not a unified theory of cognition. It represents a loosely connected set of theories grounded in multiple disciplines with the common notion of a bodily grounding for cognition. Using Kiverstein and Clark's (2009) classification of embodied approaches, which distinguishes between approaches that regard embodiment either as a component of cognition (extended functionalism), or a central tenet (enactivism), the perspective presented here falls into the latter category. It is also heavily informed by Barsalou's (2008) grounded cognition theory that characterizes cognition as simulation of perceptual, motor and introspective states. First we present a review of work on embodiment and evolution of social cognition, tool use, and metaphorical thinking. Our goal here is to provide a connected and expansive perspective for what embodiment holds for learning and cognition; one that is not confined by the simplistic reduction of embodiment as bodily activity having some form of influence on cognition. We propose that internal simulations of sensorimotor and affective states, projection of identity on external entities and perspective taking are central to social cognition, language, tool use and abstract thinking. Relating findings from neuroscience studies to learning design and education is a challenge. In other words, while cognitive science / neuroscience studies on human cognition are certainly interesting for learning designers and educational researchers, the implications of these studies for learning design practice are often not clear. To address these concerns, and to ground the theoretical discussions in the first part of the paper, in the second part, we present some of our learning design artifacts that exemplify the approach suggested by our embodied framework. These learning design artifacts are agent-based computational models of various scientific phenomena, embedded in a sequence of inquiry activities intended for high-school classrooms. We argue that the presented agent-based modeling activities are aligned with the embodied perspective described in this paper and provide affordances for students that build on the natural …