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Consider two individuals, John and Mary, who each possess a number of concepts. How can we determine that John and Mary both have a concept of, say, Horse? John and Mary may not have exactly the same knowledge of horses, but it is important to be able to place their horse concepts into correspondence with one another, if only so that we can say things like, “Mary’s concept of horse is much more sophisticated than John’s. ” Concepts should be public in the sense that they can be possessed by more than one person (Fodor, 1998; Fodor & Lepore, 1992), and for this to be the possible, we must be able to determine correspondences, or translations, between two individuals ’ concepts. There have been two major approaches in cognitive science to conceptual meaning that could potentially provide a solution to finding translations between conceptual systems. According to an “external grounding” account, concepts ’ meanings depend on their connection to the external world (this account is more thoroughly defined in the next section). By this account, the concept Horse means what it does because our perceptual apparatus can identify features that characterize horses. According to what we will call a “Conceptual web ” account, concepts ’ meanings depend on their connections to each other. By this account, Horse’s meaning depends on Gallop, Domesticated, and Quadruped, and in turn, these concepts depend on other concepts, including Horse (Quine & Ullian, 1970). In this chapter, we will first present a brief tour of some of the main proponents of conceptual web and external grounding accounts of conceptual meaning. Then, we will describe a computer algorithm that translates between conceptual systems. The initial goal of this computational work is to show how translating across systems is possible using only withinsystem relations, as is predicted by a conceptual web account. However, the subsequent goal is to show how the synthesis of external and internal information can dramatically improve translation. This work suggests that the external grounding and conceptual web accounts should not be

Cognitive scientists interested in the link between language and visual experience have shown that linguistic input influences eye movements. Research in this area, however, tends to focus on literal language alone. In the current study, we investigate whether figurative language influences eye movements. In our experiment, participants viewed two-dimensional depictions of static spatial scenes while they heard either fictive motion sentences, such as The palm trees run along the highway, or non-fictive motion sentences, such as The palm trees are next to the highway. Overall, sentence type influenced participants ’ eye movements. Specifically, gaze duration on the figure (e.g., palm trees) was longer with fictive motion sentences than with nonfictive motion sentences. Our results demonstrate that figurative language influences visual experience. They provide further evidence that fictive motion processing includes mentally simulated motion.

Based on the theory of conceptual metaphor we investigated the evaluative consequences of a match (or mismatch) of different conceptual relations (good vs. bad; abstract vs. concrete) with their corresponding spatial relation (UP vs. DOWN). Good and bad words that were either abstract or concrete were presented in an up or down spatial location. Words for which the conceptual dimensions matched the spatial dimension were evaluated most favorably. When neither of the two conceptual dimensions matched the spatial dimension, ratings were not as favorable as when the dimensions did match, but were still significantly more favorable than when one conceptual category was matched

ABSTRACT: An important reason for the tremendous interest in metaphor over the past 20 years stems from cognitive linguistic research. Cognitive linguists embrace the idea that metaphor is not merely a part of language, but reflects a fundamental part of the way people think, reason, and imagine. A large number of empirical studies in cognitive linguistics have, in different ways, supported this claim. My aim in this paper is to describe the empirical foundations for cognitive linguistic work on metaphor, acknowledge various skeptical reactions to this work, and respond to some of these questions/criticisms. I also outline several challenges that cognitive linguists should try to address in future work on metaphor in language, thought, and culture. KEY-WORDS: Cognitive Linguistics; Metaphor research; metaphor in language; metaphor in thought; metaphor in culture.

The scaffolded mind: Higher mental processes are grounded in early

This research investigates whether the physical act of enclosing an emotionally laden stimulus can help alleviate the associated negative emotions. Four experiments found support for this claim. Using recalled negative experiences such as regretted past-decisions and unsatisfied strong desires, we showed in Experiments 1A and 1B that emotional negativity was reduced for participants who placed a written recollection of such experiences inside an envelope. However, enclosing a stimulus unrelated to the emotional experience did not have the same effect (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, we showed that the effect were not driven by participants simply doing something extra with the materials, and that the effect of physical enclosure was mediated by the psychological closure that participants felt towards the event. Sealing the Emotions Genie 3 1 2

This heretical article suggests that while embodiment was key to evolving human culture, and clearly affects our thinking and word choice now (as do many things in our environment), our culture may have evolved to such a point that a purely memetic AI beast could pass the Turing test. Though making something just like a human would clearly require both embodiment and memetics, if we were forced to choose one or the other, memetics might actually be easier. This short paper argues this point, and discusses what it would take to move beyond current semantic priming results to a human-like agent. 1

We find that transfer of learning from a perceptually concrete simulation to an isomorphic but superficially dissimilar textbased problem is sensitive to the congruence between the force dynamics common to both systems and the kinesthetic schema induced via action in the first, perceptually concrete, simulation. Counterintuitively, incompatibility between the force dynamics and the kinesthetic schema has a beneficial effect on transfer, relative to compatibility as well as an unrelated control. We suggest that this incompatibility between action and system dynamics may make the system’s relational structure more salient, leading to a more flexible conceptualization that ultimately benefits transfer. In addition, we suggest that too much “action concreteness ” in hands-on learning may actually limit transfer, by fostering an understanding that is tied to that action and therefore less available for transfer in situations where that action is no longer relevant.

Cognitive research on metaphoric concepts of time has focused on differences between moving Ego and moving time models, but even more basic is the contrast between Ego- and temporal-reference-point models. Dynamic models appear to be quasi-universal cross-culturally, as does the generalization that in Ego-reference-point models, FUTURE IS IN FRONT OF EGO and PAST IS IN BACK OF EGO. The Aymara language instead has a major static model of time wherein FUTURE IS BEHIND EGO and PAST IS IN FRONT OF EGO; linguistic and gestural data give strong confirmation of this unusual culture-specific cognitive pattern. Gestural data provide crucial information unavailable to purely linguistic analysis, suggesting that when investigating conceptual systems both forms of expression should be analyzed complementarily. Important issues in embodied cognition are raised: how fully shared are bodily grounded motivations for universal cognitive patterns, what makes a rare pattern emerge, and what are the cultural entailments of such patterns?