Embodied Cognition
“Recent advances in understanding what psychologists call “embodied cognition” indicate a surprisingly direct link between mind and body. It turns out that people draw on their bodily experiences in constructing their social reality. Studies show, for example, that someone holding a warm cup of coffee tends to perceive a stranger as having a “warmer” personality. Likewise when holding something heavy, people see things as more serious and important — more “weighty.”
However, until recently it was not known whether bodily experiences could help in generating new ideas and solutions to problems. Our research, which will be published soon in the journal Psychological Science, discovered that it can.”
Suntae Kim, Evan Polman, Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks
New York Times, 2/25/12
Schemata
“A schema (pl. schemata or schemas), in psychology and cognitive science, describes any of several concepts including:
- An organized pattern of thought or behavior.
- A structured cluster of pre-conceived ideas.
- A mental structure that represents some aspect of the world.
- A specific knowledge structure or cognitive representation of the self.
- A mental framework centering on a specific theme, that helps us to organize social information.
- Structures that organize our knowledge and assumptions about something and are used for interpreting and processing information.
