Grounding Cognition in Perception and Action: A Special Issue

The past decade or so has seen a growing realization that our cognitive processes are shaped by the physical reality of the human body and its situatedness in a physical environment. Pushing this paradigmatic re-consideration of cognition ever further, this edited volume provides an up-to-date overview of current research in the domain of "embodied cognition".

A panel of international experts report how they study the multi-faceted interfaces between action and language, between perception and action, and between imagery and action. The contributions to this volume offer a comprehensive overview of the wide range of behavioural and neuroscientific methods available to advance our understanding of embodied cognition.

Some of the main findings point to the role of the motor system in language comprehension, confirming therefore that higher cognition may at least in part be grounded in the brain’s motor system. Other findings suggest likewise that the brain’s systems appear to affect each other’s performance at far earlier levels than was presumed by previous models of cognition. A critical review by the guest editors integrates these findings and also discusses the limitations of motor involvement in language processing.

Overall, this collection of papers is a timely and exciting document that highlights the benefits and advantages of a multi-disciplinary investigation of human cognition.