CA Gibson

Will Gibson (2009)

Negotiating textual talk: conversation analysis, pedagogy and organisation of online asynchronous discourse.

British Educational Research Journal, 5,705-721

Offers CA as ‘ a useful addition to analytic concern’ ‘provides an insightful comparative frame for thinking about how conversation can be achieved in face-to-face environments as against online environments’

P706

Definition of pedagogy: ‘the development of plans for the organisation of educational activities and for the structure of learning and teaching materials, resources and technologies’ The enactment of pedagogy i.e. practice ‘ in situ-interactional work in which such plans pertain’. Study practice to inform design.

Conversation analysis

‘sister discipline to ethnomethodology (EM)’…. CA ‘shares the concern of the latter with the investigation of the methods by which societal ‘members’ locally assemble a sense of social order’ ‘both are interested in the ways that people’s activities create what they regard as observable phenomena of some kind’ – e.g a conversation between friends’, a job interview.

For CA this led to the question of how societal ‘members organise their talk and analyse each other’s conversations in the construction and negotiation of social practices’

The analysis for this article focuses on just 3 general areas of CA .i.e. 3 analytical frames (KRO – ? all ways of manipulating power relationships’) that have been identified from an extensive amount of empirical evidence using CA in face-to-face contexts. Looking specifically at multi party conversation.

a. Sequential organisation – how do people take turns. In multi-party conversations the negotiation of who speaks next ‘has been simplified into a 3 part rule, a) the current speaker may select the next speaker, b) the next speaker may self-select c) the current speaker may continue speaking (Sacks et al, 1994)

b. Adjacency pairs – important for ordering conversation stems from (a) p207 ‘ how turns in conversation s can be hearably linked as two-part sequences, such as question-answer, complaint-apology, greeting-greeting’ Sacks proposed the following characteristics that ‘the first part of a pair implies a preference, the second be produced and where it is not produced it will be heard as absent and may require some kind of repair work’

c. Topic organisation . uses (a) & (b) to study the way in which topics are ‘brought about, closed off or otherwise negotiated’ They might be solicited by others, or presented, accepted or rejected .

Face-to-face

P708 ‘ there is a preference that the person who’s turn constituted the trouble initiate its repair’ ( McHoul,1990) argued that in the classroom repair work was usually done by the teacher by using the Initiation-Reply-Evaluation (IRE) sequence with pupil conversational turn sandwiched in the middle so that repair work could be done on the Evaluation turn. Studies have shown that without a teacher doing I & E pupils on their own rarely get to E rather they start off a new topic.

Question arises ‘how to transfer these ideas to text?’

How do people make sense of text? Particular asynchronous text

P706 ‘ how are technologies put to use in the playing out of interaction’?

What’s missing in asynchronous text ?

• Discourse markers (KRO question this)
• Gesture ( KrO ?substitution)
• Direct reference to some aspect of the preceeding conversation ( reply with quote discussed later by Gibson)

But evaluation of the analysis of evidence presented makes reference to ‘built in characteristics of how a post will be represented!)’ i.e. whether text intentionally or technologically mediated.

Another question – how are new topics that often emerge out of existing ones, managed

Method

Post graduate reading group, 6 week duration. 12 registered students 8-10 active each week. One discussion board each week. Encouraged to use the discussion boards as a general forum. Range of experience with CMC. Ethics, written permission from students, text anonymised.

Analysis based on just 1 discussion thread (5 messages) involving 4 participants from discussion of week 3(58 messages in total , 8 discussion threads )( reasons for choosing this particular thread was not made explicit).

Findings

Author claims p711 ‘ strong similarities with findings regarding the organisation of talk in face-to-face settings’

Post 1-Jane – poses two questions, Titled accordingly, discursively orientated.

(note this was 5^th post on the discussion board so how do students know that it is the beginning of the thread? Have to track that down therefore contextual ambiguity ( but isn’t this given by the functionality of BB?) different students may access the messages in a different order therefore p712‘ absence of a shared experience of the discursive environment’

Post 2 tutor topic acceptance. In this case tutor has assumed discussion rights ie ‘part of the armoury of interactional strategies which include things like closing off discussions or nominating particular people’

Post 3 Sarah –uses terms contained in message one ( student design) and thread title (?intended design by student or automatic) and provides an answer to Jane and uses the answer position to pose a new question i.e. p715 ‘ Sarah replicates an observed preference in synchronous face-to-face talk that new topics are seen as coming from old topics’.

Post 4 Anne – topicalises the final section of the preceeding post p715 ‘ relicates the preference found in face-to-face talk that next turns are functionally orientated to directly preceeding utterances’ in this case by using quote – not readily available in face-to-face. Another topic shift with the same title. P716 ‘ this observation perhaps adds weight to the concern over the ways in which built in preferences of representation (i.e. message headings) may create ambiguities about interactional purposes’

Post 5 tutor addresses Ann by name ( first time names have been used) topicalises by selecting bit of text to quote but doesn’t mark where in the text that quote is coming from

P713 ‘two party f-to-f conversation operates with a preference that names are used minimally’ ‘ multiparty are often characterised by an increased use of names’

Conclusions

Author talks in terms of participation rights (KRO critique this view from a CoP approach)

P717 the similarity with face-to-face as to how topic development occurs is the interesting part of this analysis ‘the general rule of‘ use only appropriate places to make a new topic’ and ‘use existing talk as a resource for those topics’ are all visible.

P718 another similarity strictly sequential organisation of talk ( KRO but doesn’t make reference to the cognitive load from all the other threads that are taking place), the use of adjacency (question-answer pairs, differential interactional rights for students and tutors.

Overall the author sees this group of students as using the asynchronous environment in a synchronous way (KRO I would have like to see more detailed proof of this by seeing what the students were doing for the rest of the time)

Link to multi-modal

P717 “There are a number of distinctive writing strategies present in all the above posts: the use of italics, bold and colour to emphasise particular words; brackets to segment off sections of sentences; quotations to reference in detail the reading that is being discussed; paragraphs to visually represent separation; question marks, commas, dashes, quotation marks and full stops – all these visual devices serve as medium-specific resources for demonstrating the intentions of the authors’

Argumenation Andrews

The importance of argument in education

Richard Andrews (2009)

Types of argument

1. Everyday tiffs, spats rows
2. ‘Mostly highly prized of academic discourse’
3. working out a third point from two given points
4. a synopsis – e.g. for a plot, it begins the next stage i.e. it chronicles, it has the bare bones of narrative and narrative signifies the argument.

Two meta-genres operating in different ways

Argument 1-3 above

Narrative 4 above

Argumentation – the process of argument. This definition puts distance between type 1 and the rest. Type 1 is often triggered by something that is not the real cause of the difference

P4 ‘ a way of exploring an idea to its logical conclusion, a means by which a range of views can be expressed’ It allows you to make a contribution therefore can limit power and authority of significant others’

P5 ‘functions of argument -clarification, cathartis, defence etc, persuasion.

P5 ‘ argument, whilst properly associated with rationality, is often thought to be opposed to passion and feelings.’ …..’Rather than accept such an easy polarity, argument and rationality can be seen as deeply implicated in passion and feeling’ Andrews suggests the idea of intuition as high speed rationality.

Persuasion is not the same as argument (argumentation)

Argumentation and Education

Refers to Habermas ( philosopher) and Vygotsky

Vygotsky

Conceptualised reflection as inner argumentation – ‘ why all that is internal in higher mental functions was at one time external’ – the relations between people.

P7 ‘reflection is more than a miasmic , static read-off from experience’ rather it is seen as sociogenetic’

P7 ‘ dynamic mental space informed by social argument ‘ the dialogue is both with experience/the outside world on the one hand, and with ideas themselves, the internal process of reflecting/thinking.

P8 ‘Part of the underlying justification for the statement is that the development of disciplinary practices historically, is the result of ‘real relations between people’ e.g. WEAs, particularly women English as an alternative to classics at Oxbridge

P8 ‘ Gradually ‘patterns of expectation and convention establish’ “ This, the lines and conduits along which thought and argumentation take place are determined’ ( KRO formative role of teacher, norms)

Arguments can be tacit or explicit. In education a role of the teacher is to make arguments explicit.

P11 in order to develop learners ‘have to be amenable’ to the process of argumentation

However p14 ‘ the term argumentation can be threatening, it can disrup and destabilise’ therefore why the term discussion ids often preferred.

Uses three examples primary children , undergraduate essay, masters engineering student, to demonstrate that argument can manifest in different ways

Right of everyone to have mastery of the art of argument.

Claims - Habermas – we constantly make claims, claims require eviedence or a degree of validation – they are an element of argumentation in that they invite counter-claim.

Can you argue without words – multimodal?

Claims that other modes can be more visceral ( KRO assumption because didn’t back up the claim) Shrimpton example at the Melbourne races p19 ‘still image can embody an argument through the tension between two elements in the image’ ie counterpoint.

Dissociable identity/expression Winstonetal

fMRI- Adaptation reveals dissociable neural representations of identity and expression in face perception.

Winston, J.S., Henson, R.N.A., Fine-Goulden, & Dolan, R.J. (2004).

J. Neurophysiol. 92(3) 1830-1839.

Distributed model of face processing

‘Distributed model of face processing (Haxby JV, Hoffman EA, and Gobbini MI. The distributed human neural system for face perception. Trends Cogn Sci 4: 223–233, 2000) propose an anatomical dissociation between brain regions that encode invariant aspects of faces, such as identity, and those that encode changeable aspects of faces, such as expression’, p1 (KRO – but how can face be described as invariant there differences in profile perspective etc). Fits with Bruce & Young model.

Anatomical detail

Fusiform gyrus – identity of perceived face

Superior temporal sulcus (STS) represents ‘changeable aspects’ eg expression, gaze.

Single unit recoding in animals and data from patients with discrete lesions support both the concept of dissociation and the anatomical sites implicated. However studies have demonstrated enhanced fusiform activity to emotional faces. ‘This effect has been attributed to modulatory effects from amygdala, reflecting attentional processing associated with emotive stimuli’ (Dolan RJ. Emotion, cognition, and behavior. Science 298: 1191–1194, 2002).

Method

Using fMRI measures adaptation rather than difference. Adequately sampled regions of interest as follows fusiform, amygdala, STS, inferior frontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex

5 male faces from Karolinski Directed Face database database contains two exemplars of each expression for each identity. Therefore could use different images of the same face for the adaption process. Stimuli were converted to grayscale and equated for mean luminance.

Expressions used – anger, disgust, fear, happiness and sadness

16 right handed healthy subjects, age 18-29, with normal vision. 2 rejected due to unacceptable level of fMRI artefact. Alongside the fMRI study a similar paradigm was used to test behavioral response in another cohort of 16 participants.

2x2 factorial design: Same identity (SI) Different identity (DI) Same expression (SE) Different expression (DE)

The effect of visual attention/arousal was monitored ‘there were no detectable differences in visual attention ( eye-gaze direction) or arousal (indexed by pupil diameter changes) between the different experimental conditions’ p8.

Stern 2005

Having acknowledged the social and economic value of education, modern societies are increasingly making concerted efforts to improve schooling at all age levels. Today, policy-makers and practitioners responsible for educational reform and improving classroom practice seek to base their decisions on empirical evidence rather than on opinions, fashions, and ideologies, as was too often the case in the past. This desire for "evidence-based" education has coincided with a period of tremendous progress in the field of neuroscience and enormous public interest in its findings, leading to an ongoing debate about the potential of neuroscience to inform education reform. Although the value of neuroscienceresearch on this front is seemingly promising, collaboration with educators is doomed to failure if the public is not correctly informed and if the research is not considered in an interdisciplinary context.

It has become dangerously fashionable to label general--even trivial--pedagogical advice that is not grounded in scientific fact as "brain-based learning." For instance, findings about rapid synaptic proliferation in young children's brains have nurtured hopes that cognitive capabilities can be increased by teaching infants vocabularies and basic facts with audiovisual material. But proponents of these early education programs have conveniently overlooked the lack of direct empirical evidence linking neurological and learning processes. It is far from clear whether children who are encouraged to memorize isolated facts early in life show better long-term retention than their peers.

As a scientist specializing in school-related learning, I am open to the educational implications ofneuroscience. However, we need to scale down unrealistic expectations. Otherwise, there is a danger that new efforts to incorporate research in this area into education could be stymied by falsely raising the hopes of the public and policy-makers. There is the further danger that people will ignore the importance of empirical research in the fields of educational and instructional science, psychology, and information technology--work that can continue to teach us about good schooling. Thanks to these more traditional areas of research, we understand a great deal about what has gone wrong in learning environments when otherwise competent students fail to learn. Research on learning and instruction has provided precise and applicable knowledge about how to design powerful learning environments in many content areas. What we now know about the conditions under which pictorial representations aid in teaching advanced concepts goes far beyond the recommendations of so-called brain-based learning.

Nevertheless, certain groups of learners do not benefit sufficiently from educational environments developed in accordance with state-of-the-art research on learning and instruction, and here is where collaboration among traditional research disciplines and neuroscience may be promising. Looking into the brain during problem solving might help to clarify what impedes learning. For instance, there is an ongoing debate on whether male students outperform female students in mathematics and science because of their greater ability to use visual-spatial representations as reasoning tools. As yet, however, the implications of achievement data and behavioral observations remain ambiguous in this respect. Neuroimaging techniques have elucidated areas of the brain that are especially involved in visual-spatial processing, so we may be able to find out whether differences in achievement can be traced back to the use of visual-spatial representations in reasoning. Similarly, neuroimaging may help to clarify whether visual or phonological processing is impaired in people with dyslexia.

Neuroscience may also be able to show how prior experiences can improve learning, going beyond psychological explanations. Although many studies have found evidence for the overwhelming impact of prior knowledge of skills, procedures, or concepts on learning, there may be other ways of improving learning besides such knowledge transfer. Cognitive activities can stimulate certain neuronal processes by triggering electrical impulses and the release of neurotransmitters in particular brain areas. Concurrently, other cognitive activities that are processed in similar brain areas may be enhanced, even if the two cognitive activities involve completely different knowledge structures.

Neuroscience alone cannot provide the specific knowledge required to design powerful learning environments in particular school content areas. But by providing insights into the abilities and constraints of the learning brain, neuroscience can help to explain why some learning environments work while others fail. As part of interdisciplinary collaborations, neuroscience is poised to help structure the future classroom. This would be "evidence-based" reform worth supporting.

Bransford et al

Bransford et al ( for position chapter)

Quotes

P217

‘history & principles that animate each tradition’

‘look for conceptual collisions that shape, challenge and extend’

Synergy aims for next decade – bring together three separate strands -

1. Implicit learning & the brain
2. Informal
3. Formal

1. Implict learning and the brain

P210 ‘ refers to information that is required effortlessly (?KRO for CMC style) and sometimes without conscious recollection of the learned information or having acquired it’

P210 ‘ implicated in many types of learning that take place in both formal and informal educational settings’

P211 ‘occurs in many domains. For example it influences social attitudes and stereotypes regarding gender & race’….

‘young children’s imitative learning of tools/artefacts’…

‘media and technology’

‘evolutionary value….. enables organisms to adapt to new environments simply be being in them and observing and interecting with the people and objects encountered there ( Howard & Howard, 2001)

Focus on language learning & learning about people ( social cognition)

3 hypothesis

p211

• implicit learning plays an important role across the lifespan
• research on language has discovered principles of learning that emphasize the importance of patterned variation and the brain’s coding of these patterns and these findings may illuminate other cognitive and social domains.
• Curriculum implications

Interpreting brain data

P212 – things to note

‘valid inferences about brain processes often require a series of converging experiments rather than one or two’

‘learning induced changes in the brain involve biological processes that may have complicated and interacting pathways of regulation just like other biological processes ‘ ( KRO puts into context questions about how meaningful it is to know where brain activation occurs)

p213 - fact

In young children the brain ‘overproduces’ synapses.

‘the process of synaptic overproduction takes place at different rates in different part of the brain ( Huttenlocher & Dabholkar, 1997)’

Ideas

Kuhls ( language development specialist) ideas on ‘neural commitment’

e.g. p213 ‘ early neural commitment to phonetic units of a specific language supports the learning of more complex patterns, such as the words of a language. However, neural commitment to learned patterns also constrains future learning because neural networks dedicated to native language patterns are incompatible with non-native patterns’

i.e. interpretation ‘ critical period depends on experience as much as process’ – ‘ maturation may ‘open’ the period during which learning can occur, but learning itself may play a powerful part in closing the period’ ( KRO provides a fairly powerful explanation of the interaction between biology and the environment’)

p214

‘broadening the discussion the neural commitment concept can be thought of as a neural instantiation of important dimensions of expertise in any domain’ i.e. expertise a s filter to ‘ focus attention, structure perception, thought and emotions so that we work more efficiently’

frees up attention, perception, emotion for creative endeavour

raises a fundamental question ‘ how can the brain form neural commitments whilst maximising our ability to stay open to adaptive change?’

Focus on language learning & learning about people ( social cognition)

See previous hypothesis under this title

Focus in particular

Language learning

· Acquisition of language

· Second language learning

( KRO adds text based asynchronous online learning)

human interaction

· live – Kuhn seems to be advantaged in language learning ? why ? evolutionary preparadness.

· mediated

Implicit learning & its connection with imitation

p215

‘Children’s implicit learning from other people a case of imitative learning’ ( this a section heading and is quoted as it is quite explicit about the connection between implicit learning & imitation.

‘ubiquitous nature of imitation amongst humans across the lifespan’ ( eg Metzoff, 2005)

‘monkeys do not imitate. So imitative behaviour involves more than the presence of mirror units and neuroscientists are trying to determine the special, perhaps uniquely human abilities that support our proclivity for learning by observation ‘ ( review by Meltzoff & Decety, 2003)

‘one possibility is that even the simple act of Imitation is connected with perspective taking and therefore is a more social & collaborative activity than first appears ‘( Meltzoff, 2005)

2. Informal learning

(KRO links to communities of practice)

• During a lifetime over 90% of learning occurs outside of school
• There are divergent views on the value of informal learning and the quality of thinking involved
• This strand describes research from a wide range of settings were informal learning takes place eg dairy workers, Lebanese tailors.

two main settings

1. designed e.g. museums

2. emergent, often self organised e.g. playgrounds

( KRO how does CMC, online, social networks, digital native etc fit ? is it a mixture of the two?)

Historical perspective

P217

‘Traditionally mostly outside mainstream educational psychology’

two main strands

1. Anthropology 1900-1950, Mead ‘her version of the social actor ……. In constant need for guidance from others’

2. Sociological ethnography Becker, 1950s, full expression 160s, 1970s

e.g. becoming a marihuana user, 1953.

‘Becker argued against an exclusively skill based notion of learning, that has been characteristic of both behaviorism ( physical skills) and cognitivism ( mental skills). Becker’s critical addition was to show that learning also involved the development of particular meanings for a skill, which were learned among other community makers’

bearing in mind that marihurana is not necessarily nic –

‘Becker argues that becoming a marihurana user requires that one learns to experience the sensations of smoking as pleasurable, through the appropriation of a set of socially transmitted meanings of experience.’

The historical account just reviewed

Foreshadows Guided participation ( Rogoff, Matsusov & White)

Resonates with guiding and participating (Mead)

Locates the development of identity as a dimension of learning (e.g. Becker & Casper, 1956) – central to the understanding of informal learning n.b. Becker’s work – school is a lousy place to learn.

Contributions of this strand (2)

1. Context of learning

P219

‘ although studies of informal learning have been used to cast a critical eye on the traditional practices of schooling and to provide ideas for formulating alternative educational practices, the focal attention to context as a theoretical construct among informal learning researchers has led to a more general reinterpretation of school as a context, namely that it is one’ and just one so to look at some contrasts

p220

formal ( eg school) - apparatus of school ‘ intentional teaching, designed and sequenced curricula, regular individualised assessments

informal

1. apprenticeship – legitimate peripheral participation ( Lave and Wenger)
2. intent participation – Rogoff et al – ‘ learning happens through keen observation and listening, in anticipation of participation ……. ( children) observe and listen with intent concentration and initiative, and their collaborative participation is expected when they are ready to help in shared endeavours’ (Rogoff, 2003, p176)

‘understanding learning in this way attends to how individuals can learn without explicit teaching but through participation in a community’s ongoing activities’

2. learning as change - what changes?

Cognitivists – mental constructs

Informal learning

Forms of participation in ongoing cultural activities

Changes in identity

Tool mediated embodied skills

therefore

p221

‘suggest reframing in terms of context rather than informal/formal e.g. transitions are a context and we need ‘ a better understanding of what people bring to, take from, and adapt across different contexts may also have implications’

3. Designs for formal learning and beyond.

This section starts off by highlighting two important achievements so far

1. development of standards ( national & international)
2. learning from the cognitivists – expertise & noticing. (Noticing comes from what it takes to be an expert ). ‘If people fail to notice subtle examples that create disequilibrium, they do not experience the need to attempt to change their views’

how to teach expertise

it requires

• knowledge organisaiton
• identify enduring ideas
• important things to know and be able to do
• ideas worth mentioning
• connections

but it needs to be adaptive ( see innovation section) and effective it needs to be alert to considering implementation alongside the background of the teacher’s knowledge which may have moved from explicit to tacit. It also raises questions for assessment – eg how to assess adaptive expertise.

Considering expertise further raises the question of how to balance efficiency and innovation

to encourage efficiency. Cognitive psychology has been useful here in that scripts, schema, procedures are all ideas that are translatable into classroom practice.

to encourage innovation . p226 need to ‘help people resist assimilation’ e.g. be able to restructure out thinking in social situations’ Need to engage in knowledge building as well as knowledge telling ( Scardamelia & Bereiter, 1991) and encourage disconfirmation as well as knowledge building ( Karmiloff- Smith & Inhelder, 1774/1975)

Future synergies

Methodological

? Synergy between methodology i.e. neuroscience, ethnographic analysis of social interactions & classroom based approaches eg activity theory.

Theoretical

P227

‘researchers from all three of the strands are begining to explore the implications of the idea that people – from infancy to adulthood – seem to naturally pay attention to other people and learn from them’

Examples from each strand

S1 and imitation – ‘human children are socially attuned from birth ‘ in particular to faces, voices. Infants observe and imitate

Stimultated research as follows

A focus on higher order questions such as empathy, the neural basis of empathy and of competition and collaboration ( Decety et al , 2004)

S2 p227 ‘ groups where people know each other function differently from groups of relative strangers’

Collaboration leads to bettwr problem solving and groups outperform individuals

‘quality of conversations and nature of shared engagement mediates how much is learnt’

researching how to stimulate more and better collaborations.

S3 social cognitions ( scripts) . Stimulated talk about humaine learning ‘ let students learn about content whilst also learning about people’

Sharing research tools

P228

An example is Learnlab at the Pittsburg Centre.

‘Seven ‘ highly instrumented courses’ ……. Each available for use in real classrooms’ state of art ( technologically and pedagogically)

Searching for conceptual collisions.

(cf 3Cs of DSE212)

ps read this section again if using this resource in a different context.

There are pros and cons of trying to align conceptual collisions. Some examples of collisions are

• Preconceptions ( including expertise) & commitments ( including neural)
• Meaning and understanding
• metacognition . how does reflection play out across the three strands.

One way forward is to anchor collisions around phenomena

• We learn from experience; previous experience can involve different kinds of learning eg implicit, informal, formal all contribute.
• We need to think in terms of implicit and informal learning occurring alongside formal (curriculuar learning) sometimes simultaneously e.g. learning about the self, others, morality ( fishing trip example) i.e. multiple levels of simulutaneous learning. Does this clash (collide) with the idea that attention needs to be explicitly focused?
• Common to all three strands is the influence of social interactions therefore provide opportunity for a wide variety of distributed expertise. Think in terms of motivation coming from being able to contribute.

support for cognition & emotion interaction

Fredrickson, B.L. & Branigan, C. (2005)

Positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and thought action repertoires

Cognition and Enmotion, 19,3,313-332

The broaden –and-build theory (Fredrickson, 1998,2001) hypothesises that positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and thought-action repertoires. Two experiements with college students tested these hypotheses. In each, participants viewed a film that elicted (a) amusement (b) contentment (c) neutrality (d) anger or (e) anxiety. Scope of attention was assessed using a global-local visual processing task (Experiment 1) and thought-action repertoires were assessed using a Twenty Statements Test (Experiment 2). Compared to a neutral state, positive emotions broadened the scope of attention in Experiment 1 and thought action repertoires in Experiment 2. In Experiment 2, negative emotions, relative to a neutral state, narrowed thought-action repertoires. Implications for promoting emotional well being and physical health are discussed.

Niedenthal et al ( 2005)

Niedenthal, P.M., Barsalou,L.W., Winkielman, P., Krauth-Gruber, S., & Ric, F. (2005)

Embodiment in Attitudes, Social Perception and Emotion

Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9, 3, 184-211

Multi modality nature of experience a central part of the theory of embodiment described in this paper

Theoretically pitched against amodal theories of concept formation. For me it is an alternative but no convincing argument that it is THE alternative.

KRO comment experimental evidence that is reviewed ( both cognitive and social) relies heavily on approach ( as a positive inidcator ) and avoidance ( as a negative indicator).

Wide range of example of imitation and mimicry ( note described under social perception and to an extent emotion)

Raises the issue of unconscious processes

Prior/alternative theory - Amodal architectures

Computer metaphor influential

Makes two claims

p186

1. ‘ software of the mind is independent of the hardware of the body’ i.e. ‘any sufficiently complex physical system could have human intelligence. In principle the software that constitutes the mind ( including the ‘social mind’) could run on anything – neurons, silicon or even wooden gears – as long as the elements were arranged in proper functional relations.’

2. ‘’high level cognition ……. Is performed using abstract, amodal symbols that bear arbitrary relations to the perceptual states that produce them ( Newell & Simon, 1972). Mental operations on these amodal representations are performed by a central processing unit that is informationally encapsulated from the input ( sensory) and output ( motor) subsystems ( Fodor, 1983). The only function of the sensory unit is to deliver detailed representations of the external world to the central unit. The only function of the motor system is to dutifully execute the central executive’s commands.’ ‘For example, on interacting with a particular individual, amodal symbols redescribe the experienced perceptions, actions, and introspections to establish a conceptual representation of the interaction in long-term memory. As a person’s knowledge about such interactions grows, the underlying amodal symbols become organized into structures that represent concepts extracted across experience (e.g., Collins & Quillian, 1969).These abstracted concepts constitute the person’s knowledge’ schemata e.g. social scripts.

Authors note that there is no empirical evidence for such systems but nevertheless they have gained wide acceptance not least because they are a way of accounting for the operation of knowledge across a wide range of examples. Also the ideas have been successfully applied to the implementation of intelligent systems.

The authors position statement regarding embodied cognition

Recent theories of embodied cognition p185 ‘view knowledge acquisition ( KRO - ?simulators) and knowledge use (KRO ?simulation) as processes grounded in the brain’s modality-specific systems.’ (KRO note – on page 188 authors review experimental evidence to support their claim for embodied cognition and use neuropsychology reports of modality specific function to support their claims but do not explain why they support embodied cognition although I agree that they are compatible. However it can also be argued that they are compatible with amodal theories).

‘’Our view of what knowledge is determines how we conceptualise perception, memory, judgement, reasoning and even emotion. It is generally agreed that the processing of any mental content, including social and emotional content, involves internal symbols of some sort- mental representations. ‘ but ‘What are mental representations ? …. How do they derive their meaning?’

Embodiment effects in Cognitive Psychology

Online embodiment ( related term, situated cognition)

P187 ‘refers to the idea that much cognitive activity is intimately tied to relevant modality specific- processes required to interact with the environment effectively. For example, when meeting a new individual (e.g., a tall and imposing person), a perceiver spontaneously produces in vivo sensory and somatic responses (e.g., looking up and feeling apprehensive) as well as motor responses (e.g., stepping back to keep distance). The embodiment account views these sensory, somatic, and motor responses as necessary for the encoding and interpretation of the new individual……. A central tenet of recent theories is that the establishment of this repertoire plays a central role in higher cognition’.

Offline embodiment ( ? symbolic)

‘Just thinking about an object produces embodied states as if the object were actually there. (KRo implies that the object, or person, is already known). …. To establish the meaning of symbols during offline processing people rely on repertoires of modality-specific responses acquired previously during online e processing of these symbols’ referents’.

Embodiment effects in Social Psychology

Three areas reviewed for social psychology namely attitudes, social perception & emotion

Attitudes

Summary p 190 ‘ The studies described in this section on attitudes demonstrate two embodiment effects of interest. First, during online exposure to objects, the production of motor movements associated with positive attitudes leads to the later expression of positive attitudes, and the production of motor movements associated with negative attitudes leads to the later expression of negative attitudes. Second, during offline cognition, processing symbols that stand for absent attitude objects are most efficient when a congruent (KRO another example of the use of congruence/incongruence to test and support theory) motor behaviour is maintained, suggesting that representing conceptual knowledge involves the relevant behaviour’

Social Perception

Imitation and mimicry.

Reviews research that show that perceivers imitate the facial gestures of perceived others.

Importantly, imitation extends beyond facial behavior. Individuals engaged in conversation tend to synchronize their latency and rate of speech, the duration of their utterances, and other speech characteristics (e.g., Capella & Planalp, 1981; Matarazzo & Wiens, 1972; Webb, 1972). Listeners also tend to mimic talkers’ emotional prosody (e.g., Neumann & Strack, 2000), manual gestures (e.g., Bavelas, Black, Chovil, Lemery, & Mullett, 1988; Maxwell, Cook, & Burr, 1985), and even their syntactic constructions (e.g., Bock, 1986). Much research has focused on postural synchrony. For example, in one study Bernieri (1988) had judges code the postures of two individuals filmed while they were actually interacting with each other and the same two individuals who appeared to be interacting with each other but who were actually interacting with different people. Supporting the idea of imita tion, the results revealed greater postural synchrony for two individuals engaged in actual interaction than for two individuals in a contrived interaction (for related results, see Bernieri, Reznick,&Rosenthal, 1988; Bernieri & Rosenthal, 1991).

It is widely believed that synchrony facilitates cooperation and empathy among interaction partners (e.g., Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1993; LaFrance, 1985; LaFrance & Ickes, 1981; Neumann & Strack, 2000; Semin, 2000). Consistent with this belief, enhancing mimicry increases smoothness of interaction and liking between partners (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999).

Calls on mirror unit data to show that their conclusions about embodied cognition are consistent with neuroscience data.

Emotion

P192

“Emotion imitation appears to be relatively automatic and to even be elicted outside awareness,( Dimberg et al, 2000).

P192 ‘According to embodiment views, bodily responses should facilitate cognitive processing of emotion stimuli. In one demonstration of this effect, Wallbott (1991) had participants categorize the emotional facial expressions displayed in photographs of other people. As participants categorized the photographed expressions, their own faces were surreptitiously videotaped. Results showed that the participants tended to mimic the facial expressions as they categorized them. When they categorized happy faces, for example, they smiled themselves. Furthermore, participants’ accuracy in classifying the facial expressions was positively correlated with the extent of mimicry. The more participants mimicked the faces, the better they were at discerning what expression the face was displaying.’

P193 ( in the context of offline) reviewed experimental evidence to show that ‘participants’ memory performance was maximized when the motor behaviour, the emotional state, and the emotional meaning of the material were all compatible’

Theory/Frameworks for Embodied cognition

Perceptual Symbol Systems (PSS) account ( Barsalou, 1999) note: central assumption that simulation underlies conceptual processing eg stereotypes as a social psychology exemplar of conceptual processing ( KRO not sure how emotion fits in other than as a modality)

Takes a starting point Damasio’s (1989) theory of convergence zones (CZ) which rely for functioning on sensory specific feature detectors.

P194-195

The theory that informs ideas of CZ architecture assumes that systems of feature maps reside in the other sensory–motor modalities and in the limbic system for emotion. All these maps operate in parallel, so that while a face is being represented in visual feature maps, sounds produced by the face are being coded in auditory feature maps, affective responses to the face are being coded in limbic feature maps, bodily responses to it are being coded in motor feature maps, and so forth.

CZ theory further proposes that conjunctive neurons in the brain’s association areas capture and store the patterns of activation in feature maps for later representational purposes in language, memory, and thought. Damasio (1989) referred to these association areas as convergence zones.

CZs capture only conjunctions of lower-level zones (so that CZs can later coordinate their feature level reactivation)—they do not constitute some form of “grand” representation that independently represents all lower levels of the representational hierarchy. Second, during knowledge use (e.g., conceptual processing and recall), the cognizer activates the multiple modality-specific regions that encoded the experience, rather than, as traditionally assumed, only the “final” abstract regions at the end of the processing streams.

Two important claims made by this theory

P195

1. ‘ The modality –specific processing that occurred in reaction to a previously encountered stimulus can be reenacted without the stimulus being present.’ Ie facilitates offline embodiment. ……..’ this reentrant mechanism is now widely viewed as underlying mental imagery in working memory (e.g., Farah, 2000; Grezes & Decéty, 2001; Kosslyn, 1994)….

2. Unlike typical assumptions about imagery it does not require the reenactment process to be conscious.’

To explain how the cognitive system uses this distributed knowledge PSS relies on two central constructs, simulators and simulations.

Simulators – integrate modality specific information across a category’s instances.

P195 ‘ assumes that when different instances of the same category are encountered over time and space, they activate similar neural patterns in feature maps.( Farh & McClelland, 1991). In time CZ respond to these regular patterns so that the repetition establishes a multimodal representation ( simulators) of the category, a concept.

P196 ‘simulators can combine to construct complex representations that are componential, relational and hierarchical’

Simulations

Simulation involves using CZ architectures to trigger feature map information. ( Thus simulation is also a distributed representation, see them as residing in long term memory ) p196

‘According to PSS, the simulation process is highly dynamic and context dependent. It is dynamic in that a given simulator can, in principle, produce an infinite number of simulations. Depending on the current state of the simulator, the current state of associated simulators, the current state of broader cognitive processing, and so forth, a unique simulation results (Barsalou, 1987, 1989, 1993, 2003b). The simulation process is context dependent in that the simulation constructed on a given occasion is tailored to support situated action (Barsalou, 2002, 2003b).

Using simulators and simulations

P197-198it is often argued that modality-specific approaches fail because they cannot represent abstract concepts such as truth. As we have seen, however, PSS establishes simulators, not only for components of the external world, but also for components of introspection, including emotions, motivational states, cognitive operations, and so forth. Barsalou (1999) proposes that abstract concepts are abstract because they focus heavily on introspections and complex situational events. In contrast, concrete concepts are concrete because they focus on physical entities, settings, and simple behaviors in the external world. Because simulators can be established for introspections and events (not just for concrete objects), they can in principle represent the conceptual content of abstract concepts (not just the content of concrete concepts). including emotions, motivational states, cognitive operations, and so forth. Barsalou (1999) proposes that abstract concepts are abstract because they focus heavily on introspections and complex situational events. In contrast, concrete concepts are concrete because they focus on physical entities, settings, and simple behaviors in the external world. Because simulators can be established for introspections and events (not just for concrete objects), they can in principle represent the conceptual content of abstract concepts (not just the content of concrete concepts). To assess this hypothesis, Barsalou and Wiemer- Hastings (in press) used the property listing task to assess the content of abstract concepts (truth, freedom, invention) and of concrete concepts (car, sofa, bird). After participants listed the properties of these concepts, detailed coding schemes were applied to assess the content produced. Most notably, the general types of content for abstract and concrete concepts were highly similar. For all concepts, participants tended to describe situations that included objects, people, settings, behaviors, events, mental states, and relations. For both types of concepts, participants situated their conceptualizations of them, not just representing the focal category content, but also representing extensive background situational content relevant to understanding and using the category. The two types of concepts differed in their focus on this content. Whereas concrete concepts focused on entities, settings, and simple behaviors, abstract concepts focused on introspections, social entities, and complex events. Furthermore, the abstract concepts were more complex, including greater relational structures, organized in greater hierarchical depth. This exploratory study did not assess how participants represented this content. In principle, though, it seems possible that all of this content—for both concrete and abstract concepts—could be simulated. Everything that participants mentioned is something experienced either in the external or internal world.

Situated conceptualization is a central construct in the PSS framework. P198 ‘ A situated conceptualization simulates the focal category entity, along with simulation of likely setting, actions and introspections. Because the simulation includes the conceptualizer’s actions and introspections, the simulation creates the impression of ‘being there’ with the category member. As a result the conceptualizer is well prepared to interact with the entity in the anticipated situation.’……..

‘Later, these embodiments, when experienced, can trigger the situated conceptualization via the inference process of pattern completion. Specifically, the experienced embodiment

activates a larger pattern that contains it, with non perceived aspects of the pattern constituting inferences about the situation. Conversely, if through linguistic conversation, the situated conceptualization becomes active, it can, in turn, produce corresponding embodiments via the same inference process.’ ….

The PSS framework, with its construct of multimodal, situated conceptualization, accounts for the diverse collection of social embodiment effects reported in the literature. Consider priming effects on behavior, as when exposure to words associated with the elderly stereotype produces slower walking (Bargh et al., 1996). On the PSS account, stereotypes are situated

multimodal conceptualizations of social categories. In the case of the elderly stereotype, its content includes embodiments of slow motor movements.

Support for PSS ( Simulation hypothesis)

1. Modality switching costs

P200 ‘when the modality of property description changed from first to second trial participants were slower to verify

2. Instructional equivalence

Compare situations when simulation is emphasized and when it is not emphasized ( KRO relevance to guiding people in how best to interact online) Sets this up as a contrast with what amodal theories would predict. Need to read this section again p200.

3. Perceptual effort

Related views

Zajonc & Markus (1984) chapter entitled affect and cognition. Authors focused primarily on the interaction between emotion & cognition. They argued that bodily movement has representational content.

For example, Zajonc and Markus (1984) proposed that people’s particularly good memory for faces reflects their ability to imitate perceived faces and to create hard muscular representations that complement soft representations

Z& M theory was primarily associative and lacked the dynamic aspects of PSS

Criticisms of embodiment theories

Selective embodiment

P204 ‘Embodiment theories need to solve the problem of how some cognitive activity can proceed without involvement of bodily states and modality-specific simulations. PSS addresses this issue with the distinction between shallow versus deep processing. ( KRO)– however this would not apply to text based CMC) A perceiver simulates primarily when needed. When conceptual tasks can be solved using shallow strategies, such as word association, simulations of conceptual content are not recruited or play only peripheral roles’

Dynamic use of embodiment

P204 ‘ When an external factor compromises validity of a simulation in one modality, people can switch to a simulation in an alternative modality’ ( KRO I’m not convinced by this argument how is a judgement of lack of validity made)

Representational limitations of the body

P204 ‘Embodiment theories must address the problem of the body’s representational capacity. Starting with Cannon (1927, 1929), critics have argued that bodily feedback is too undifferentiated and too slow to serve as the basis of experience. Furthermore, there is the

problem that the same bodily state may be associated with different cognitive and emotional representations (Zajonc & McIntosh, 1992). These issues are actually quite old and have been effectively used by Cannon and many others to argue against the James–Lange theory

of emotion (James, 1896/1994). Several responses to this criticism are possible. Zajonc and Markus (1984) note that the motor system can support extremely subtle distinctions, as the sophistication of sensory-motor processing in spoken language illustrates. Further, even a limited number of bodily states can support a very large number of representational

distinctions. (Consider how many melodies can be played with 88 piano keys—a number much lower than the number of muscles in the body.) More important, recent embodiment approaches, such as PSS, CZ theory, and Somatic Marker Theory (Damasio, 1999), avoid the “body-is-too-crude-too slow- and-too-varied” criticisms by focusing on the brain’s modality-specific systems, instead of on actual muscles and viscera. The circuits in modality-specific brain areas are as fast and refined as any other form of cortical representation and are thus able to flexibly process a large number of modal states at the same time (Damasio, 2003)’

Higher cognitive functions

In particular whether or not the theory is able to represent abstract concepts. Argues that this is achieved through simulations of introspective experience.

Regressing to behaviorist or mere associations

Authors ascertain that this is not the case however they don’t provide a refutation just a statement that it is not the case.

Correlational or causal.

Some criticisms involved a challenge about cognitive embodiment as causal in conceptual processing ( see my own critique of Niedenthal ( 2007). Authors argue that evidence reviewed demonstrate causality but I am not convinced without detailed scrutiny of alternative explanation especially since most of the evidence is based on an experimental paradigm.

Amodal theories make the same prediction.

P205 most of the author’s rebuttal rests on the following ‘ Just because ampodal theories can be configured post hoc to explain any embodiment effect is not impressive. What would be more impressive is if they predicted these effects apriori’

Also see previous description of amodal theories namely that conceptual system is functionally & physically separate from the modality-specific systems and that knowledge abstracts over the dtail of the experience.