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SUMMARY:Embodied perception between life and death: The animate/inanimate-
 distinction in action and language perception - Mathias Hegele\, Universit
 y of Giessen
DTSTART:20141125T150000Z
DTEND:20141125T160000Z
UID:TALK56216@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Saika Parveen
DESCRIPTION:The core theoretical contribution of embodiment to cognitive s
 cience refers to the existence of a representational system that specifica
 lly encodes knowledge of man’s bodily existence along with the body’s 
 functional capabilities in interacting with the world. The existence of su
 ch a specific knowledge system implicates that the perception of animate a
 gents\, especially that of conspecifics\, constitutes a special event in t
 he perception of objects in the environment radically different from the p
 erception of inanimate objects. In this talk\, I will start by reviewing e
 mpirical evidence supporting the idea that this animate/inanimate-distinct
 ion develops early in life based on a foundational body scheme that provid
 es an innate link between the perception and production of animate actions
 . I will show that the capacity to categorize things in one’s environmen
 t as animate beings or as inanimate objects is a fundamental cognitive abi
 lity that\, in addition to object perception\, also affects visuomotor coo
 rdination\, action perception and language comprehension. I will close wit
 h a short portrayal of a current project that aims to test the hypothesis 
 of a domain-general process of animacy categorization.
LOCATION:Seminar Room\, Medical Research Council (MRC) Cognition and Brain
  Sciences
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