The Embodied Effects In Cognitive Control

In the standard cognition science typically represented by Cognitivism,cognition is something which is independent from the body,and thus is a disembodied cognition.The researchers in Embodied Cognition argue that the brain is embedded in the body and the body is embedded in the environment,the cogition is the body's cognition.The human body is not only the physical hardware of the cognition activities to which the sensorymotor area of the body provides information,but also the key player in the coginition activities.Under the framework of the embodied cognition,the more radical Extend Cognition researchers propose that the cognition is a system in which the brain,body and environment elements are interating and coupling in a dynamic way,the cognition process is not limited within the boundary of brain and skin,but also has been extended into the external world.Embodied Cognition has been among the hot topic in cognition science in recent years.The research focus in this area has been changing from arguing whether or not the body is participating in the cognition to the construction of its theory system and experimental research.Researches has shown the Embodied Cognition is actually derived from Cognitivism as there are some theoretic flaws in Cognitivism and substitute theory are proposed as an new approach.This study has accepted the moderate Embodied Cognition views which is compatible with the Cognitivism,based on the literature reviews on the current research published overseas and domestically,and synthesize the views of Cognitivism as “Symbol-Representation-Computation”,also based on the Cognitive Capacity theory,the “Quick System,Slow System” and some evendice reported by current experimental research,this study argues that the body is participating in the early stage or low level of cognition activities,and the “Symbol-Reprensention-Computation” is occurring in the later stage or high level of the cognition activities,and this would follow the principal of “least resources used and the best outcome” proposed by Kahneman.By doing this,this study could make a try to integrate the Cognitivism and Embodied Cognition,and further explore into the Extended Cognitin field by checking how the tools in the environment would participate in the cognition activities.This study employs the modified STROOP task,and integrated the embodied manipulation to make the embodied effects explicitly measurable,to explore the embodied effects in the cognitive processes.This study consists of three sections with five experiments in total.In section one,by using emotional STROOP task,the research explores how the embodied effects change by the stimuli presentation time in two progressive experiments using emotional Chinese words as experimental material.The section two looks into the embodied effects change in another two progressive experiments,using the same experimental materials as section one,by changing the cognitive load as variables in defferent levels.The Section three is based on the former two sections,using a modified STROOP task,tested how the cognition strategy change in the condition of short time and high level of difficulty,and the purpose of this research is to find experimental evidence for Extended Cognition.The main findings of this study are as follows:1)To provide experimental evidence to Embodied Cognition,and also proved that the Embodied Cognition and the Cognitivism views could be integrated as they might be related to different stages of the same one cognition activities.2)Considering the complexity of the human cognition and the complicated factors which might influence the outcome of the cognition such as the time to present the stimuli,the level of difficulties of the task,the body,as the hardware of the cognition and the provider of the content for cognition,will always be involved into the cognition activities with priority to solve the task,this is shown in the fact that embodied effects are found in the earlier stage or low level stage of the cognition,and when time is long enough or when the task is too hard,the cognition activities will mainly rely on the disembodied symbol computation.3)When it is hard to use internal resources to solve the problem,the environmental resources and tools will be used in the cognition process,and thus has a similar positon as internal resources.Especially in the Internet era,the Internet is playing an important role in the human being's cognition.