On embodied cognition and mental simulation: A meta-theoreticalcomment to Zwaan's treatise

摘要

Zwaan's scholarly paper conveys a two-fold message, pointing out many interest and fascinating phenomena in the area ofembodiment of cognition, but also raising a number of critical concerns and open questions. On the one hand, Zwaanstresses the important role of mental simulation processes for the explanation of the countless ideomotor and actionpriming effects that have intrigued students of social cognition for two decades. For example, Bargh, Chen, and Burrow's(1996) often-cited finding that semantic prime words related to elderly people (e.g., Florida, grey, wise, etc.) elicit suchremote behaviors as reduced walking speed, even after several minutes of delay, can be understood by assuming thatpriming elicits a rich, enduring, and multi-modal simulation process. This mental simulation is conceived as an integralaspect of all language comprehension. As it is supposed to consist of the "reenactment of perceptual, motor, andintrospective states acquired during interaction with word, body, and mind" (Barsalou, 2008, p. 618), an active mental-simulation stage can account for priming effects carrying over to perceptual, affective, and manifest motor reactions.Comprehension is particularly dependent on mental simulation in displaced as opposed to embedded language use, whenwords refer to a remote or unreal situation that can only be imagined or mentally constructed.