Embodied cognition in bilinguals: differences in sensorimotor processes in a native and a learned

• Autor(a) principal: Serpa, Patrícia de Fátima Medeiros
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositórios Científicos de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (RCAAP)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/10864
• topic: Socially situated cognition; Embodiment; Eye-tracking; Sensorimotor processing; Cognição social situada; Corporalização; Processamento sensório-motor

The Socially Situated Cognition approach argues that cognition emerges from the interaction with the physical and social context, as opposed to being abstract, symbolic and independent from the interactions with other agents and the environment. Therefore, human cognition is adaptive, shaped by the context and grounded in sensorimotor, perceptive and affective experiences. In other words, cognition is embodied. However, research with bilingual speakers suggests differences between the sensorimotor and affective processing in a native language (L1) and a second language learned later in life (L2). These differences seem to derive from the fact that while L1 is early acquired in rich sensorimotor and affective contexts, namely in the family, L2 is usually learned and used in formal contexts such as in school or at work. Therefore we suggest that L2 is not embodied or at least to the same extent as L1 is. In the current work we have replicated Spivey and Geng’s (2001) paradigm, documenting the role of sensorimotor processes in cognition by measuring participant’s eye-movements during auditory language comprehension tasks. Additionally we extended this research by including a visual detection task in which these sensorimotor processes are further examined. The results obtained partially document our hypothesis and open new research avenues for the examination of embodied processes in cognition.