Cognitive science has traditionally viewed the mind as essentially disembodied, that is, the nature of mind and cognition is neither affected by the ¡Èsystem¡É it is implemented in nor affected by the environment that the system is situated in. But since the mid-1980s a new approach emerged in artificial intelligence that emphasized the importance of embodiment and situatedness and since then terms like embodied cognition, embodied intelligence have become more and more apparent in discussions of cognition. As embodied cognition has increased in interest so have the notions of embodiment and situatedness and they are not always compatible. This report has found that there are, at least, four notions of embodiment in the discussions of embodied cognition: software embodiment, physical embodiment, biological embodiment and human(oid) embodiment.

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.

Movement-based interactive systems for play came into the spotlight over a decade ago, and were met with enthusiasm by the general public as well as the Human-Computer Interaction research community. Yet a decade of research and practice has not fully addressed the challenge of designing for the moving body and play. This thesis argues that often, the role of the technology to sustain the play activity, and to drive the design process, has been over-emphasized, and has resulted in limited design possibilities. This thesis explores an alternative design approach to address the problem through combining the design of the technology with designing aspects of the social and spatial context where the play activity takes place. The work is grounded in an embodied perspective of experience, action, and design. Methodologically, it belongs to the Research through Design tradition (RtD). A core concept and a characterization of design practices are presented as key contributions. The concept of embodied core mechanics is introduced to frame desirable and repeatable movement-based play actions, paying attention to the way these are supported by design resources including rules, physical and digital artifacts, and the physical and spatial arrangement of players and artifacts. The concept was developed during the two main design cases: the Oriboo case, targeting dance games for children, and the PhySeEar case, targeting rehabilitative therapy for the elderly. It was further substantiated in subsequent external design collaborations. To support the design process, this thesis presents embodied sketching: a set of ideation design practices that leverage the embodied experience and enable designers to scrutinize the desired embodied experience early in the design process. Three forms of embodied sketching are presented: embodied sketching for bodystorming, co-designing with users, and sensitizing designers. Through reframing the design task as one of designing and studying embodied core mechanics, this thesis establishes an alternative approach to design for movement-based play in which significant aspects of the embodied play experience, lead, drive, and shape the design process and the design of the technology.

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I utilized a design science approach to create an automated kiosk that uses embodied intelligent agents to interview individuals and detect changes in arousal, behavior, and cognitive effort by using psychophysiological information systems. This dissertation achieves three primary purposes.First, I describe the creation of this new Information Technology artifact, discuss design choices, and show the completed prototype.Second, related to this new system, I propose a unique class of intelligent agents, which are described as Special Purpose Embodied Conversational Intelligence with Environmental Sensors (SPECIES). I outline a system model that frames the conceptual components of SPECIES agents, provide design principles for developing SPECIES agents, and discuss some of the research implications of the various components in the model.Third, based on the SPECIES paradigm, I present five studies that evaluate different parts of the model. These studies form the foundational research for the development of the automated kiosk. In the first study, participants interacted with an automated interviewing agent via a chat-based modality (108 participants). The study clearly demonstrates the strong, positive correlation of both response time and the number of times a message is edited to deceitful responses. The software developed became the heart of the kiosk. The second study evaluated changing human decision-making by including influence tactics in decision aids (41 participants). This paper-based decision experiment showed that framing decision aids as appeals to individuals' values possibly change individuals' decisions and was the basis for study 4. The third study examined human-computer interaction and how SPECIES agents can change perceptions of information systems by varying appearance and demeanor (88 participants). Instantiations that had the agents embodied as males were perceived as more powerful, while female embodied agents were perceived as more likeable. Similarly, smiling agents were perceived as more likable than neutral demeanor agents. The fourth study assessed how incorporating impression management techniques into embodied conversational agents can influence human perceptions of the system (88 participants). The impression management techniques proved to be very successful in changing user perceptions. Specifically, agents that performed self-promotion were perceived as more powerful, trustworthy and expert. Agents that performed ingratiation were perceived as more attractive. In the fifth study, I used an embodied agent to interview people who had either constructed a fake bomb and packed it into a bag or had only packed clothes into a bag (60 participants). The agent used eye-tracking technology to capture pupil dilation and gaze behavior. When combined with vocal measurements, the kiosk technology was able to achieve over 93% accuracy in one trial.

The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) plays a critical role in the organization of goal directed behavior. This role is suggested by the anatomy of mPFC as the region rests at the top of a complex cortical and sub-cortical hierarchy, receives convergent sensory and motor information from multiple modalities, and is the target of modulatory brainstem nuclei that respond to prediction and reward. Given these observations, it was hypothesized that mPFC neurons store associations between stimuli when the stimuli contribute to the prediction of reward. To test this hypothesis, neural ensemble spiking activity was recorded in the mPFC as rats performed a paired-associate discrimination task. In one condition, both elements of the paired-associate stimulus-sequence provided information about reward delivery. In another condition, only the first stimulus contributed to the prediction. As hypothesized, stimulus-selective, prospective delay activity was observed during sequences in which both elements contributed to reward-prediction. Unexpectedly, however, selective delay responses were associated with slight variations in head position and thus were not necessarily generated by intrinsic mnemonic processes. Interestingly, the sensitivity of neurons to head position was greatest during intervals when reward delivery was certain. These result suggest that a major portion of delay activity in the rat mPFC reflects task-relevant sensory-motor activity, possibly related to behavioral strategies rather than to the local storage of stimulus-stimulus associations. These observations agree with evidence suggesting that mPFC neurons are particularly responsive during the performance of actions related to the acquisition of reward. These results also indicate that considerable attention must be given to the monitoring of sensory-motor variables during delay tasks as slight changes in position can produce activity that appears to be driven by intrinsic mechanisms. It is further suggested that such activity may perform an important role in memory guided behavior, although this role may contrast sharply with standard theories of delay activity and short term memory storage. In particular, it is suggested that delay activity observed in the prefrontal cortex may correspond to the maintenance of memories that are 'stored' in the body or in the environment in the forms of embodied or situated behaviors.

This thesis attempts a paradigmatic shift in the focus of ballad study towards embodiment, moving from ‘representation’ towards ‘experience’ and with an emphasis on ‘process,’ as opposed to ‘product.’ The originality lies in the development of a new approach which explores words, music and embodied aesthetic experience as they come together and create meaning in performance, conceived of as ‘presence’ (Porter 2009). Ideas from philosophy are connected with concepts from ethnomusicology and folklore and brought to bear upon broad issues in the study of expressive culture. While the focus here is on the ballad experience in a Scottish context, ultimately the questions asked attend to dimensions of experience that do not emphasise cultural-boundedness. The emphasis is not on my experience as a fieldworker, nor on fieldwork descriptions, but rather on the development of new theoretical methodologies that can be extended and applied to other cultural forms. To that end, I am little concerned with texts, variants and versions, transcriptions and collections which traditionally constitute the subject matter of ballad studies. What is presented is a convergence of contemporary disciplinary approaches, pushing the boundaries of the existing framework of ballad and folksong studies to include dimensions of cultural experience rarely considered in this field. Working within the wider interpretative framework of hermeneutic phenomenology, theories of embodiment are used as a means to introduce ideas from embodied cognition. The development of ideas is concerned with describing how our embodied experience of the world informs the processes of meaning-making, how human cognitive capacities are at work in the experience of ballad singing and how the structure of the ballad reflects and shapes these capacities. Embodied philosophy and contemporary theories of metaphor are central in this endeavour. Ultimately, this work seeks to find a legitimate way of talking about the ephemeral, intangible yet real quality of embodied aesthetic experience—the shivers and chills of the Maysie—that avoids metaphysical explanations and that makes sense in a secular, humanistic framework. The aim is not to demystify experience in a reductionist sense, but to offer an interpretation that is less about ‘transcendence’ and more about the creative processes present.

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.

This dissertation focuses upon patterns and concepts of containment within selected Lieder from Hugo Wolf's Mörike collection. More specifically, I focus upon melody as a way of understanding how these found patterns and movements within melodic containers provide meaning. I focus on the melody for two reasons. First, my research here is the first to present such a detailed analysis of the melody. Second, the manuscripts of the Mörike-Lieder indicate that the melodic line was often an important referential point for Wolf. In my analysis, I focus upon six songs: "Der Knabe und das Immlein," "Ein Stündlein wohl vor Tag," "Frage und Antwort," "Lebe wohl," "An eine Äolsharfe," and "Das verlassene Mägdlein." Two central questions guide my analysis. First and most important, how can our knowledge of musical patterns reveal meaning within selected songs of the collection? Each song analyzed presents numerous melodic patterns that enhance our understanding of the poems. Second, how can these patterns lead to a better understanding of some of the ways that the individual songs of the collection relate to one another? As we will with the analysis of "Der Knabe und das Immlein," "Ein Stündlein wohl vor Tag," "Frage und Antwort," and "Lebe wohl," I propose that these four songs form two pairs. Here, the pair of "Frage und Antwort" and "Lebe wohl" create a newly identified song pair. The analysis follows a four-pronged approach applying Steve Larson's theory of musical forces, Candace Brower's theory of musical meaning, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's cognitive metaphor theory, and Schenkerian analysis. Looking at the Mörike-Lieder from this vantage point will allow us to see how melodies flow in such a way as to suggest motions or metaphors as they relate to the poetic ideas. Known as the "Poet's Composer," I hope to illustrate that Wolf portrayed great sensitivity when setting the poetry and created unique links between specific songs. / 2015-03-29