Embodied cognition

Embodied cognition is the view that cognitive processes are shaped by the body’s physical properties, sensory and motor systems, and interactions with the environment.

Sensorimotor contingencies: Regular relations between an action and the resulting change in sensory input. They explain how perceptual abilities depend on knowing what movement will reveal.
Sensorimotor system: The neural and bodily systems that coordinate sensory information with movement. It supplies the coupled perception and action capacities central to embodied accounts.
Conceptual metaphor: A cognitive mapping in which one domain of experience is understood through another. Spatial and bodily experience can structure abstract ideas such as time and emotion.
Computational theory of mind: The view that cognition consists of computations over mental representations. Embodied approaches challenge versions that treat cognition as independent of body and environment.
Grounded cognition: The view that cognition draws on perceptual, motor, and affective systems rather than relying only on abstract symbols. It describes how bodily systems can contribute to concepts, memory, and reasoning.
Proprioception: The sense of the body's position and movement, derived from signals within the body. It gives cognition access to bodily state without relying on vision.
Mental rotation: A cognitive task requiring the imagined rotation of an object to compare its orientation with another. Its performance has been linked to imagined bodily movement and motor processes.
Cartesian dualism: The philosophical view that mind and body are distinct substances. Embodied cognition rejects the idea that thought can be understood apart from bodily life.
Perceptual symbol systems: A theory that represents concepts through partial reenactments of perceptual and motor experience. It proposes a specific mechanism for grounding abstract knowledge in sensory experience.
Interoception: The sensing and interpretation of signals arising from within the body. Internal bodily signals can shape emotion, judgment, and self-awareness.

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