Laboratory for Embodied Cognition

What is Embodied Cognition?

How do words, objects, and events become meaningful to us? Glenberg and his students are attacking these problems by developing an embodied theory of cognition:  All cognitive processes are based on bodily and neural processes of perception, action, and emotion.  Recent work in the lab has demonstrated a) how language comprehension depends on action and emotion, b) how coordinated action links us to other people, c) contributions of mirror neurons to language and action understanding,  d) how embodiment theory can be used to design educational interventions to enhance young children's reading comprehension.

Research in the Glenberg lab is organized into two tracks. The first investigates the embodied basis of cognition with a focus on language. This basic research is guided by the question: How do bodily and neural systems of action, perception, and emotion contribute to high-level cognition? The second track applies the basic research to developing a reading comprehension intervention for emerging readers.The intervention, EMBRACE, is designed to help children construct embodied mental models while reading: Children MANIPULATE IMAGES ON AN IPAD to correspond to the sentences they read, and then they learn to imagine manipulating the IMAGES. This intervention greatly increases reading comprehension and has the collateral benefit of helping children love to read."

Our lab motto is Ago Ergo Cogito - "I act, therefore I think"