Anna Borghi

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ISBN 978-1-4614-9539-0. OCLC. 873949348.
  • Borghi, Anna M. (2023). The Freedom of Words: Abstractness and the Power of Language. Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/9781108913294.
  • Representative papers

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    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Cognitive science</span> Interdisciplinary scientific study of cognitive processes

    Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes with input from linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, computer science/artificial intelligence, and anthropology. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition. Cognitive scientists study intelligence and behavior, with a focus on how nervous systems represent, process, and transform information. Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include language, perception, memory, attention, reasoning, and emotion; to understand these faculties, cognitive scientists borrow from fields such as linguistics, psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, neuroscience, and anthropology. The typical analysis of cognitive science spans many levels of organization, from learning and decision to logic and planning; from neural circuitry to modular brain organization. One of the fundamental concepts of cognitive science is that "thinking can best be understood in terms of representational structures in the mind and computational procedures that operate on those structures."

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Cognition</span> Act or process of knowing

    Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, imagination, intelligence, the formation of knowledge, memory and working memory, judgment and evaluation, reasoning and computation, problem-solving and decision-making, comprehension and production of language. Cognitive processes use existing knowledge and discover new knowledge.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Image schema</span>

    An image schema is a recurring structure within our cognitive processes which establishes patterns of understanding and reasoning. As an understudy to embodied cognition, image schemas are formed from our bodily interactions, from linguistic experience, and from historical context. The term is introduced in Mark Johnson's book The Body in the Mind; in case study 2 of George Lakoff's Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: and further explained by Todd Oakley in The Oxford handbook of cognitive linguistics; by Rudolf Arnheim in Visual Thinking; by the collection From Perception to Meaning: Image Schemas in Cognitive Linguistics edited by Beate Hampe and Joseph E. Grady.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Picture superiority effect</span> Psychological phenomenon

    The picture superiority effect refers to the phenomenon in which pictures and images are more likely to be remembered than are words. This effect has been demonstrated in numerous experiments using different methods. It is based on the notion that "human memory is extremely sensitive to the symbolic modality of presentation of event information". Explanations for the picture superiority effect are not concrete and are still being debated.

    In cognitive psychology, chunking is a process by which small individual pieces of a set of information are bound together to create a meaningful whole later on in memory. The chunks, by which the information is grouped, are meant to improve short-term retention of the material, thus bypassing the limited capacity of working memory and allowing the working memory to be more efficient. A chunk is a collection of basic units that are strongly associated with one another, and have been grouped together and stored in a person's memory. These chunks can be retrieved easily due to their coherent grouping. It is believed that individuals create higher-order cognitive representations of the items within the chunk. The items are more easily remembered as a group than as the individual items themselves. These chunks can be highly subjective because they rely on an individual's perceptions and past experiences, which are linked to the information set. The size of the chunks generally ranges from two to six items but often differs based on language and culture.

    Situated cognition is a theory that posits that knowing is inseparable from doing by arguing that all knowledge is situated in activity bound to social, cultural and physical contexts.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Eleanor Rosch</span> Professor of psychology

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    In psychology and neuroscience, memory span is the longest list of items that a person can repeat back in correct order immediately after presentation on 50% of all trials. Items may include words, numbers, or letters. The task is known as digit span when numbers are used. Memory span is a common measure of working memory and short-term memory. It is also a component of cognitive ability tests such as the WAIS. Backward memory span is a more challenging variation which involves recalling items in reverse order.

    The concept of motor cognition grasps the notion that cognition is embodied in action, and that the motor system participates in what is usually considered as mental processing, including those involved in social interaction. The fundamental unit of the motor cognition paradigm is action, defined as the movements produced to satisfy an intention towards a specific motor goal, or in reaction to a meaningful event in the physical and social environments. Motor cognition takes into account the preparation and production of actions, as well as the processes involved in recognizing, predicting, mimicking, and understanding the behavior of other people. This paradigm has received a great deal of attention and empirical support in recent years from a variety of research domains including embodied cognition, developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and social psychology.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Vittorio Gallese</span> Italian physiologist (1959–)

    Vittorio Gallese is professor of Psychobiology at the University of Parma, Italy, and was professor in Experimental Aesthetics at the University of London, UK (2016–2018). He is an expert in neurophysiology, cognitive neuroscience, social neuroscience, and philosophy of mind. Gallese is one of the discoverers of mirror neurons. His research attempts to elucidate the functional organization of brain mechanisms underlying social cognition, including action understanding, empathy, language, mindreading and aesthetic experience.

    The early left anterior negativity is an event-related potential in electroencephalography (EEG), or component of brain activity that occurs in response to a certain kind of stimulus. It is characterized by a negative-going wave that peaks around 200 milliseconds or less after the onset of a stimulus, and most often occurs in response to linguistic stimuli that violate word-category or phrase structure rules. As such, it is frequently a topic of study in neurolinguistics experiments, specifically in areas such as sentence processing. While it is frequently used in language research, there is no evidence yet that it is necessarily a language-specific phenomenon.

    Priming is the idea that exposure to one stimulus may influence a response to a subsequent stimulus, without conscious guidance or intention. The priming effect refers to the positive or negative effect of a rapidly presented stimulus on the processing of a second stimulus that appears shortly after. Generally speaking, the generation of priming effect depends on the existence of some positive or negative relationship between priming and target stimuli. For example, the word nurse might be recognized more quickly following the word doctor than following the word bread. Priming can be perceptual, associative, repetitive, positive, negative, affective, semantic, or conceptual. Priming effects involve word recognition, semantic processing, attention, unconscious processing, and many other issues, and are related to differences in various writing systems. Onset of priming effects can be almost instantaneous.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Embodied cognition</span> Interdisciplinary theory

    Embodied cognition is the concept suggesting that many features of cognition are shaped by the state and capacities of the organism. The cognitive features include a wide spectrum of cognitive functions, such as perception biases, memory recall, comprehension and high-level mental constructs and performance on various cognitive tasks. The bodily aspects involve the motor system, the perceptual system, the bodily interactions with the environment (situatedness), and the assumptions about the world built the functional structure of organism's brain and body.

    Embodied cognition occurs when an organism's sensorimotor capacities, body and environment play an important role in thinking. The way in which a person's body and their surroundings interacts also allows for specific brain functions to develop and in the future to be able to act. This means that not only does the mind influence the body's movements, but the body also influences the abilities of the mind, also termed the bi-directional hypothesis. There are three generalizations that are assumed to be true relating to embodied cognition. A person's motor system is activated when (1) they observe manipulable objects, (2) process action verbs, and (3) observe another individual's movements.

    Embodied bilingual language, also known as L2 embodiment, is the idea that people mentally simulate their actions, perceptions, and emotions when speaking and understanding a second language (L2) as with their first language (L1). It is closely related to embodied cognition and embodied language processing, both of which only refer to native language thinking and speaking. An example of embodied bilingual language would be situation in which a L1 English speaker learning Spanish as a second language hears the word rápido ("fast") in Spanish while taking notes and then proceeds to take notes more quickly.

    The bi-directional hypothesis of language and action proposes that the sensorimotor and language comprehension areas of the brain exert reciprocal influence over one another. This hypothesis argues that areas of the brain involved in movement and sensation, as well as movement itself, influence cognitive processes such as language comprehension. In addition, the reverse effect is argued, where it is proposed that language comprehension influences movement and sensation. Proponents of the bi-directional hypothesis of language and action conduct and interpret linguistic, cognitive, and movement studies within the framework of embodied cognition and embodied language processing. Embodied language developed from embodied cognition, and proposes that sensorimotor systems are not only involved in the comprehension of language, but that they are necessary for understanding the semantic meaning of words.

    Intuitive statistics, or folk statistics, is the cognitive phenomenon where organisms use data to make generalizations and predictions about the world. This can be a small amount of sample data or training instances, which in turn contribute to inductive inferences about either population-level properties, future data, or both. Inferences can involve revising hypotheses, or beliefs, in light of probabilistic data that inform and motivate future predictions. The informal tendency for cognitive animals to intuitively generate statistical inferences, when formalized with certain axioms of probability theory, constitutes statistics as an academic discipline.

    Social cognitive neuroscience is the scientific study of the biological processes underpinning social cognition. Specifically, it uses the tools of neuroscience to study "the mental mechanisms that create, frame, regulate, and respond to our experience of the social world". Social cognitive neuroscience uses the epistemological foundations of cognitive neuroscience, and is closely related to social neuroscience. Social cognitive neuroscience employs human neuroimaging, typically using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Human brain stimulation techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial direct-current stimulation are also used. In nonhuman animals, direct electrophysiological recordings and electrical stimulation of single cells and neuronal populations are utilized for investigating lower-level social cognitive processes.

    Kate Nation is an experimental psychologist and expert on language and literacy development in school age children. She is Professor of Experimental Psychology and Fellow of St. John's College of the University of Oxford, where she directs the ReadOxford project and the Language and Cognitive Development Research Group.

    David Holcman is an applied mathematician, biophysicist and computational biologist at École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He is known for his work on the narrow escape problem, the redundancy principle in biology, the modeling of molecular trafficking in neurobiology, of diffusion and electrodiffusion in dendritic spines, the modeling of neuronal network dynamics such as Up and Down states in electrophysiology. He developed multiscale methods to analyse large amount of molecular super-resolution trajectories, and polymer physics modeling and analysis to study cell nucleus organization. These approaches led to several verified predictions in the life sciences such as nanocolumn organization of synapses or astrocytic protrusion penetrating neuronal synapses.

    References

    1. 1 2 "People | Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione". www.istc.cnr.it. Retrieved 2021-03-04.
    2. "BallaB - MEMBERS". sites.google.com. Retrieved 2021-03-04.
    3. "Frontiers in Psychology". www.frontiersin.org. Retrieved 2021-03-20.
    4. 1 2 "Anna Borghi - Home page". laral.istc.cnr.it. Retrieved 2021-03-09.
    5. Borghi, Anna; Caramelli, Nicoletta (1996). "Superordinate and basic level concepts in different contexts". International Journal of Psychology. 31 (3–4): 1656.
    6. Caramelli, Nicoletta; Borghi, Anna (1997). "The hierarchical structure of categories: perception vs cognition". Ricerche di Psicologia. 21: 7–46.
    7. Borghi, Anna M.; Cimatti, Felice (February 2010). "Embodied cognition and beyond: Acting and sensing the body". Neuropsychologia. 48 (3): 763–773. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.10.029. PMID   19913041. S2CID   13157947.
    8. 1 2 Borghi, Anna M.; Glenberg, Arthur M.; Kaschak, Michael P. (2004-09-01). "Putting words in perspective". Memory & Cognition. 32 (6): 863–873. doi: 10.3758/BF03196865 . ISSN   1532-5946. PMID   15673175.
    9. Grounding cognition : the role of perception and action in memory, language, and thinking. Diane Pecher, Rolf A. Zwaan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2010. ISBN   978-0-521-16857-1. OCLC   620112599.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
    10. Borghi, Anna M.; Riggio, Lucia (2009-02-09). "Sentence comprehension and simulation of object temporary, canonical and stable affordances". Brain Research. 1253: 117–128. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2008.11.064. ISSN   0006-8993. PMID   19073156. S2CID   11461603.
    11. Borghi, Anna M (2004-01-01). "Object concepts and action: Extracting affordances from objects parts". Acta Psychologica. 115 (1): 69–96. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2003.11.004. ISSN   0001-6918. PMID   14734242.
    12. Borghi, Anna M.; Riggio, Lucia (2015). "Stable and variable affordances are both automatic and flexible". Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 9: 351. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00351 . ISSN   1662-5161. PMC   4473001 . PMID   26150778.
    13. Borghi, Anna M.; Flumini, Andrea; Natraj, Nikhilesh; Wheaton, Lewis A. (2012-10-01). "One hand, two objects: Emergence of affordance in contexts". Brain and Cognition. 80 (1): 64–73. doi:10.1016/j.bandc.2012.04.007. ISSN   0278-2626. PMID   22634033. S2CID   6056117.
    14. Borghi, Anna M. (2014). Words as social tools : an embodied view applied to abstract concepts. Ferdinand Binkofski. New York. ISBN   978-1-4614-9539-0. OCLC   873949348.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
    15. Borghi, Anna M.; Barca, Laura; Binkofski, Ferdinand; Castelfranchi, Cristiano; Pezzulo, Giovanni; Tummolini, Luca (2019-07-01). "Words as social tools: Language, sociality and inner grounding in abstract concepts". Physics of Life Reviews. 29: 120–153. Bibcode:2019PhLRv..29..120B. doi:10.1016/j.plrev.2018.12.001. ISSN   1571-0645. PMID   30573377. S2CID   58542571.
    16. Dove, Guy (2019). "Language influences social cognition". Physics of Life Reviews. 29: 169–171. doi:10.1016/j.plrev.2019.03.007. PMID   30905555. S2CID   85500714.
    17. Falandays, J. Ben; Spivey, Michael J. (2019-07-01). "Abstract meanings may be more dynamic, due to their sociality: Comment on "Words as social tools: Language, sociality and inner grounding in abstract concepts" by Anna M. Borghi et al". Physics of Life Reviews. 29: 175–177. Bibcode:2019PhLRv..29..175F. doi:10.1016/j.plrev.2019.02.011. ISSN   1571-0645. PMID   30857866. S2CID   75136679.
    18. Desai, Rutvik H. (2019-07-01). "Access and content of abstract concepts: Comment on "Words as social tools: Language, sociality, and inner grounding in abstract concepts" by Anna M. Borghi et al". Physics of Life Reviews. 29: 166–168. Bibcode:2019PhLRv..29..166D. doi:10.1016/j.plrev.2019.03.010. ISSN   1571-0645. PMID   30905556. S2CID   85497456.
    19. Glenberg, Arthur M. (2019-07-01). "Turning social tools into tools for action: Comment on "Words as social tools: Language, sociality and inner grounding in abstract concepts" by Anna M. Borghi et al". Physics of Life Reviews. 29: 172–174. Bibcode:2019PhLRv..29..172G. doi:10.1016/j.plrev.2019.02.009. ISSN   1571-0645. PMID   30857867. S2CID   75136726.
    Anna Borghi
    CitizenshipItalian
    OccupationAssociate Professor of Psychology
    Academic background
    Alma mater University of Bologna