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Syftet med studien är att bidra med kunskap om hur elever i lågstadiet använder sig av gester för att kommunicera och uttrycka sig i matematik. För att besvara syftet utgår studien från två forskningsfrågor som fokuserar på elevers gester och muntlig kommunikation i samband med att de bygger en konstruktion med tre-dimensionella geometriska kroppar. Studien grundar sig i embodied cognition vilket innebär att man förutsätter att lärande sker med hjälp utav kroppen. Studiens metod utgörs av observationer med åtta elever, där samtliga observationstillfällen spelades in. Materialet analyserades med hjälp av en tematisk analys som resulterade i några centrala teman i studien. Resultatet visar att de deltagande eleverna i stor utsträckning använder gester för att uttrycka sig och kommunicera i geometri. Eleverna använde gester i samband med att de uttryckte geometriska kroppars form, läge och position. En av studiens slutsatser är att gester kan användas för att komplettera eller förtydliga elevers tankar när de bygger konstruktioner med geometriska kroppar. / The purpose with the study is to contribute with knowledge about how pupils in the elementary school use gestures to communicate and express mathematics. To achieve the purpose of the study the two research questions focus on pupils’ hand gestures and oral speech when they build a construction with geometrical three-dimensional shapes. The study is based on the theory of embodied cognition, which means that knowledge and learning is embodied. The data consists of observations with eight pupils and all the observation was recorded. The material was analysed using a thematic analysis and proceed to find central themes in the material. The result shows that the pupils frequently use gestures to express and communicate in geometry. The pupils used gestures when they expressed the shape but also situations and positions of the geometric shapes. The conclusion is that gestures can be used as a complement and to clarify the pupils’ thoughts when they build a construction with geometrical shapes.

Studiens syfte är att beskriva hur elever i de lägre åldrarna använder handgester när de löser aritmetikuppgifter. Den teoretiska utgångspunkten i studien är embodied cognition, där det centrala i teorin är att vi lär oss genom kroppen. Tio elever i sjuårsåldern i Sydafrika har observerats med fokus på deras användning av handgester. Resultatet visade att flera av eleverna använder handgester när de löser additions- och subtraktionsuppgifter och att det finns ett antal olika handgester de använder sig av. De olika handgesterna delades in i taktila och icke-taktila gester, som i sin tur kopplades till konkreta och abstrakta gester. Slutsatsen av studien är att elever använder sig av olika handgester i olika kombinationer när de löser aritmetikuppgifter. Deras gester med händer och fingrar kan vara ett uttryckssätt för deras utvecklingsprocess och kan fungera som en bro mellan konkret och abstrakt tänkande. / The aim of the study is to describe how students of the lower ages use hand gestures when solving arithmetic tasks. The theoretical basis of the study is embodied cognition. The viewpoint of embodied cognition holds that the body is a tool for learning. Ten students in South Africa, aged seven, have been observed based on their use of hand gestures. The result showed that several students use hand gestures when solving addition and subtraction tasks and there were a number of different hand gestures being used. The various hand gestures were divided into tactile and non-tactile gestures. These could in turn be linked to concrete and abstract gestures. The conclusion of the study is that students use different types of hand gestures and also in various combinations when solving arithmetic tasks. Their hand gestures can be a way of expressing their development process and to function as a bridge between concrete and abstract thinking.

From the very creation of the term by Czech writer Karel Capek in 1921, a "robot" has been synonymous with an artificial agent possessing a powerful body and cogitating mind. While the fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotics have made progress into the creation of such an android, the goal of a cogitating robot remains firmly outside the reach of our technological capabilities. Cognition has proved to be far more complex than early AI practitioners envisioned. Current methods in Machine Learning have achieved remarkable successes in image categorization through the use of deep learning. However, when presented with novel or adversarial input, these methods can fail spectacularly. I postulate that a robot that is free to interact with objects should be capable of reducing spurious difference between objects of the same class. This thesis demonstrates and analyzes a robot that achieves more robust visual categorization when it first evolves to use proprioceptive sensors and is then trained to increasingly rely on vision, when compared to a robot that evolves with only visual sensors. My results suggest that embodied methods can scaffold the eventual achievement of robust visual classification.

The theory of embodied cognition focuses on mechanisms of meaning beyond the traditional in western metaphysics dichotomy of body and mind. These mechanisms are considered to be the emerging aspects of meaning related to early infant experience of interaction with the environment. Image schema as the earliest form of representation in the mind corresponds to the notion of archetype from analytical psychology. Theory and research suggest that being in touch with the archetypal level of cognition is related to integration of parts of the personality and promotes well-being. Art and creativity are considered to facilitate this process and in this sense to promote healing. Active imagination is a method devised by C. G. Jung to relate to different aspects of the personality through creativity which results in a creative product. Active imagination bears similarity to art, however it focuses not only on the aesthetic outcome of the creative endeavor but also on the transformation of the personality in this process. Analytical psychology studies a number of creative expressions of the products of active imagination such as sand play, drawing, clay modeling, writing, dancing and psychodrama. However, there are no available empirical studies of the healing aspects of creative work with cut flowers. We hypothesized that being involved in creative work with cut flowers would promote well -being expressed in increase of hope, existential/spiritual meaning and humility and decrease of depression, anxiety and physiological symptoms. The participants in our study were undergraduate students from Texas A&M University either involved in a semester long course in Floral Design or in an Introductory Psychology Course. Participants were assessed at two time points on all variables of interest. They were also asked to draw mandalas and to write essays (floral condition). Although quantitative analysis did not find any significant differences between the groups over time as a result of the creative work with cut flowers, the qualitative analysis of the mandala-drawings and the essays showed statistically significant tendency to balance, centeredness and calmness over time in the floral group.

Giving students opportunities to ground mathematical concepts in physical activity has potential to develop conceptual understanding. This study examines the role direct embodiment, an instructional strategy in which students act out concepts, plays in learning mathematics. I compared two conditions of high school geometry students learning about similarity. The embodied condition participated in eight direct embodiment activities in which the students represented mathematical concepts and explored them through their movements. The observer condition participated in eight similar activities that did not involve physical activity. The students in the embodied condition had greater learning gains on a pre- and post-test, and those gains were driven by larger increases in conceptual understanding. There were also differences in the way the two conditions remembered the activities. On a survey given at the end of the unit, students in the embodied condition were more likely to write about the activities from a first person point-of-view, indicating that they had likely adopted a first person viewpoint during the activities. The embodied condition was also more likely to switch points-of-view when writing about the activities, indicating that they had likely translated among multiple viewpoints during the activities. This suggests translating between viewpoints is one mechanism for learning through direct embodiment. Students in the embodied condition also wrote more about the activities, which suggests that they remembered more about their experiences. Their survey responses included more mathematical and non-mathematical details than the responses from students in the observer condition. / text

Modernity has seen the exchange of ideas about cognition between western science and eastern meditation traditions. In particular, western ways of thinking about the natural world have infiltrated Indian theories of yoga. This intersection of ideas in the twentieth-century has resulted in a problematic trend to theorize yogic phenomena, including meditation, in scientific terms. These translations converge on explicating yogic processes within a context of advancing knowledge about the brain. This translational approach to bringing etic and emic perspectives together in the same framework results in interpretations of meditation that succumb to problems cognitive science faces at a broader level in theorizing cognition and mind-body interrelations. In this study, I take a different approach to bringing emic and etic perspectives together by placing a phenomenologically interpreted emic account of absorption (the meditative shift in consciousness) into dialogue with current scientific understandings of three central mental processes of meditation. Specifically, I analyze ways of conceptualizing attention, memory, and emotion, and their underlying mechanisms as posited in yoga and science, focusing on the problem of how each system interprets the reality of absorption. This comparison suggests a basic similarity between the two systems: theorizing cognition and meditative absorption in terms of embodiment. This finding emphasizes the dual nature of embodiment as both experiential and physical. Finally, I consider this dialogue from an embodied mind perspective, an emerging way of thinking about and theorizing the mind-body in cognitive science, because this perspective challenges longstanding theoretical problems in western understandings of how the mind works. This analysis suggests that theorizing meditation in these dual terms of embodiment potentially solves the reductive challenges of dualistic and materialist philosophy that have plagued both religious and naturalistic attempts to explain absorption. This interdisciplinary dialogue provides a framework with which to think more critically about translational and cross-disciplinary efforts that have previously confused the goals of yoga and science and their respective foci on practice and mechanisms. I conclude that bridging ideas in this dialogical way reveals a complementary perspective between phenomenological and biological ways of understanding the mind that both hinge on embodied cognition. / text

To investigate the role of action representations in the identification of upright and rotated objects, we examined the time course of their evocation. Across five experiments, subjects made vertically or horizontally oriented reach and grasp actions primed by images of handled objects that were depicted in upright or rotated orientations, at various Stimulus Onset Asynchronies: -250 ms (action cue preceded the prime), 0 ms, and +250 ms. Congruency effects between action and object orientation were driven by the object's canonical (upright) orientation at the 0 ms SOA, but by its depicted orientation at the +250 ms SOA. Alignment effects between response hand and the object's handle appeared only at the +250 ms SOA, and were driven by the depicted orientation. Surprisingly, an attempt to replicate this finding with improved stimuli (Experiment 3) did not show significant congruency effects at the 0 ms SOA; a further examination of the 0 ms SOA in Experiments 4 and 5 also failed to reach significance. However, a meta-analysis of the latter three experiments showed evidence for the congruency effect, suggesting that the experiments might just have been underpowered. We conclude that subjects initially evoke a conceptually-driven motor representation of the object, and that only after some time can the depicted form become prominent enough to influence the elicited action representation. / Graduate / 0633 / ragavk@uvic.ca

Humankind is facing global ecological problems and resulting from these social issues, while continually destroying the ecosystems which are the life-support mechanisms of the planet and human civilization. The socio-economic system is largely influenced by top-down decision making. Political decisions are a high leverage in sustainability issues, but contemporarily they are conducted in the reductionist way, focusing on short-term profit and jeopardizing the planet and people in the long run. The thesis explores the ways of integrating more holistic approach into political decision making. The study describes the connection between cognitive processes (e.g. learning or decision making) and somatic experiences: human decisions are considered a dynamic product of interaction between the cognition, body and environment. The theory of deep learning helps to understand how decision making can be transformed, and embodied cognitive science explains what facilitates the process of deep learning. The study develops the concept of “body-environment dialogue” — the somatic and cognitive integration of an agent and the context through which the agent receives non-verbal information processed then into the agent’s inner knowledge. The way of processing the information, unlike analytical thinking, is grounded into mindfulness and reflection. It results in the holistic insight about the global socio-ecological system and its interconnections, awakes intrinsic values and causes the change in one’s decisions and actions. Embodied experiences and connection with natural environment are considered the ways to facilitate deep learning which, in turn, affects decision making. The empirical part of the research tests the possibility to affect decision making through embodied contact with nature and the local context. The experimental study project based on 3-day outdoor experiential course demonstrates a certain change in the participants’ decision making as well as illustrates the challenges and drawbacks of such approach.

Kognitivismen med rötter i analytisk filosofi och logik beskriver tänkande som symbolmanipulation efter logiska regler. Begrepp har sin mening genom att de refererar till objekt och händelser i världen. Embodied cognition (EC) eller kroppsbasserad kognition, med rötter i biologi, fenomenologi och pragmatism ser istället tänkande som ett emergent fenomen som uppstår ur erfarandet av kroppens aktivitet i världen. Begrepps mening har istället sin grund i det sensomotoriska systemet.  Abstrakta begrepp får sin mening via metaforer och metonymer. Likt konstruktivism ser EC lärande som modifiering av tidigare kunskap. Den skiljer sig dock från konstruktivism i avseende på dualism, hur kunskap finns organiserad och var begreppens mening finns. EC:s inflytande på didaktisk forskning inom naturvetenskap och matematik undersöktes genom sökning av artiklar där orden EC eller enactivism finns med. Resultatet visade ett klart större genomslag för EC inom matematikdidaktik med fler artiklar där teorin beskrivs utförligare. Inom naturvetenskapens didaktik har EC uppmärksammats i mycket mindre grad. Orsakerna till detta diskuteras.