The social roots of self development: from a bodily to an intellectual interpersonal dialogue.

In this paper, we propose that interpersonal bodily interactions represent a fertile ground in which the bodily and psychological self is developed, gradually allowing for forms of more abstract and disembodied interactions. We start by focusing on how early infant-caregiver bodily interactions play a crucial role in shaping the boundaries of the self but also in learning to predict others' behavior. We then explore the social function of the sense of touch in the entire life span, highlighting its role in promoting physical and psychological well-being by supporting positive interpersonal exchanges. We go on by introducing the concept of implicit theory of mind, as the early ability to interpret others' intentions, possibly grounded in infant-caregiver bodily exchanges (embodied practices). In the following part, we consider so-called higher level forms of social interaction: intellectual exchanges among individuals. In this regard, we defend the view that, beside the apparent private dimension of "thinking abstractly", using abstract concepts is intrinsically a social process, as it entails the re-enactment of the internalized dialogue through which we acquired the concepts in the first place. Finally, we describe how the hypothesis of "dialectical attunement" may explain the development of abstract thinking: to effectively transform the world according to their survival needs, individuals co-construct structured concepts of it; by doing so, humans fundamentally transform not merely the world they are being in, but their being in the world.

Bodily, emotional, and public sphere at the time of COVID-19. An investigation on concrete and abstract concepts.

The outbreak of Covid-19 pandemics has dramatically affected people's lives. Among newly established practices, it has likely enriched our conceptual representations with new components. We tested this by asking Italian participants during the first lockdown to rate a set of diverse words on several crucial dimensions. We found concepts are organized along a main axis opposing internal and external grounding, with fine-grained distinctions within the two categories underlining the role of emotions. We also show through a comparison with existing data that Covid-19 impacted the organization of conceptual representations. For instance, subclasses of abstract concepts that are usually distinct converge into a unitary group, characterized by emotions and internal grounding. Additionally, we found institutional and Covid-19 related concepts, for which participants felt more the need for others to understand the meaning, clustered together. Our results show that the spread of Covid-19 has simultaneously changed our lives and shaped our conceptual representations.

From Affordances to Abstract Words: The Flexibility of Sensorimotor Grounding.

The sensorimotor system plays a critical role in several cognitive processes. Here, we review recent studies documenting this interplay at different levels. First, we concentrate on studies that have shown how the sensorimotor system is flexibly involved in interactions with objects. We report evidence demonstrating how social context and situations influence affordance activation, and then focus on tactile and kinesthetic components in body-object interactions. Then, we turn to word use, and review studies that have shown that not only concrete words, but also abstract words are grounded in the sensorimotor system. We report evidence that abstract concepts activate the mouth effector more than concrete concepts, and discuss this effect in light of studies on adults, children, and infants. Finally, we pinpoint possible sensorimotor mechanisms at play in the acquisition and use of abstract concepts. Overall, we show that the involvement of the sensorimotor system is flexibly modulated by context, and that its role can be integrated and flanked by that of other systems such as the linguistic system. We suggest that to unravel the role of the sensorimotor system in cognition, future research should fully explore the complexity of this intricate, and sometimes slippery, relation.

Differences and similarities in the conceptualization of COVID-19 and other diseases in the first Italian lockdown.

Several studies have highlighted the flexible character of our conceptual system. However, less is known about the construction of meaning and the impact of novel concepts on the structuring of our conceptual space. We addressed these questions by collecting free listing data from Italian participants on a newly-and yet nowadays critical-introduced concept, i.e., COVID-19, during the first Italian lockdown. We also collected data for other five illness-related concepts. Our results show that COVID-19's representation is mostly couched in the emotional sphere, predominantly evoking fear-linked to both possible health-related concerns and social-emotional ones. In contrast with initial public debates we found that participants did not assimilate COVID-19 neither completely to severe illnesses (e.g., tumor) nor completely to mild illnesses (e.g., flu). Moreover, we also found that COVID-19 has shaped conceptual relations of other concepts in the illness domain, making certain features and associations more salient (e.g., flu-fear; disease-mask). Overall, our results show for the first time how a novel, real concept molds existing conceptual relations, testifying the malleability of our conceptual system.

When the Action to Be Performed at the Stage of Retrieval Enacts Memory of Action Verbs.

According to the embodied approach of language, concepts are grounded in sensorimotor mental states, and when we process language, the brain simulates some of the perceptions and actions that are involved when interacting with real objects. Moreover, several studies have highlighted that cognitive performances are dependent on the overlap between the motor action simulated and the motor action required by the task. On the other hand, in the field of memory, the role of action is under debate. The aim of this work was to show that performing an action at the stage of retrieval influences memory performance in a recognition task (experiment 1) and a cued recall task (experiment 2), even if the participants were never instructed to consider the implied action. The results highlighted an action-based memory effect at the retrieval stage. These findings contribute to the debate about the implication of motor system in action verb processing and its role for memory.

Flexible weighting of body-related effects in action production.

A previous study on ideomotor action control showed that predictable action effects in the agent's environment influenced how an action is carried out. If participants were required to perform a forceful keypress, they exerted more force when these actions would produce a quiet compared to a loud tone, and this observation suggests that anticipated proprioceptive and auditory action effects are integrated with each other during action planning and control. In light of the typically weak influence of body-related effect found in recent work, we aimed to extend this pattern of results to the intra-modal case of integrating proprioceptive/tactile feedback of a movement and following vibro-tactile effects. Our results suggest that the same weighted integration process as for the cross-modal case applies to the intra-modal case. These observations support the idea of a common mechanism which binds all action-related features in an integrated action representation, irrespective of whether these features relate to exafferent or reafferent signals.

Grasping a Chestnut Burr.

This work aimed to assess the role of manual laterality in action coding strategies and, subsequently, in environmental features relevant for each hand's action. Relying on Eder and Hommel's (2013) proposal, we distinguished stimulus-related and end state-related consequences in a Simon paradigm where right-handed participants were divided into two groups, one responding with gloves and one without. Two objects were presented pictorially: one for which sensory consequences of grasping were negatively valenced (a chestnut burr), and one for which they were positively valenced (an apricot). By these means, stimulus and end-state effects could be assessed separately, along with the relevance of each feature of the experimental settings. Results showed that the use of one's dominant or non dominant hand gives rise to different repercussions of stimulus-related and end state-related effects on response: Responses made with the right (dominant) hand were based on an elaborated coding (representing features of stimulus-related and end state-related consequences of action). In contrast, responses made with the left (non dominant) hand seemed to be based on a less elaborated coding (not taking into account end-state consequences of an action).

How does simulation of an observed external body state influence categorisation of an easily graspable object?

Several works have provided evidence of a resonant motor effect while observing a hand interacting with painful stimuli. The aim of this work is to show that participants are sensitive to the observation of an injured hand when they have to categorise an easily graspable object with their own hand. In Experiment 1, participants indicated whether or not photographs of objects (graspable or non-graspable, left or right oriented) could be grasped with their dominant hand, by tapping a key on a keyboard. Target objects were preceded by primes consisting of photographs of hands (injured vs healthy) in a grasping posture (power grasp). Experiment 2 consisted of two phases: In the first phase, participants had to categorise square or circle shapes. After their response (Group 1: tapping a key vs Group 2: constricting a hand grip), photograph of two types of hand (injured vs healthy) was displayed on the computer screen. In the second phase, participants had to indicate whether objects could be easily grasped with their dominant hand. Target objects were preceded by primes (square and circle) as shown in the first phase. Results show that response times were slower when the graspable target objects were right oriented and preceded by the photograph or a geometric shape associated with an injured hand. This response delay was accentuated in the handgrip condition. These results highlight that the view of an injured hand activates motor programme and pain mechanisms associated with participants relative to the consequences of the simulated grasping action.

When the vibrations allow for anticipating the force to be produced: an extend to Pfister et al. (2014).

According to the ideomotor theory, action selection is done by the mental anticipation of its perceptual consequences. If the distal information processed mainly by vision and hearing are considered essential for the representation of the action, the proximal information processed by the sense of touch and proprioception is of less importance. Recent works seem to show the opposite. Nevertheless, it is necessary to complete these results by offering a situation, more ecological, where response and effect can occur on the same effector. So, the goal of our work was to implement a more relevant spatial correspondence because to touch is not the same action that to hear or to see. To do so, participants pressed a specific key after the presentation of a stimulus. The key vibrated depending on the pressure exerted on it. In a compatible condition, high pressure on a key triggered a high vibration, while in an incompatible condition high pressure triggered a low vibration on the same effectors. As expected, the response times were faster in the compatible condition than the incompatible condition. This means that proximal information participates actively in the selection of action.