TEST: A Tropic, Embodied, and Situated Theory of Cognition

Abstract

TEST is a novel taxonomy of knowledge representations based on three distinct hierarchically organized representational features: Tropism, Embodiment, and Situatedness. Tropic representational features reflect constraints of the physical world on the agent's ability to form, reactivate, and enrich embodied (i.e., resulting from the agent's bodily constraints) conceptual representations embedded in situated contexts. The proposed hierarchy entails that representations can, in principle, have tropic features without necessarily having situated and/or embodied features. On the other hand, representations that are situated and/or embodied are likely to be simultaneously tropic. Hence, although we propose tropism as the most general term, the hierarchical relationship between embodiment and situatedness is more on a par, such that the dominance of one component over the other relies on the distinction between offline storage versus online generation as well as on representation-specific properties.

In touch with numbers: Embodied and situated effects in number magnitude comparison

“…Furthermore, considering the theoretical framework of Myachykov et al (2014) we were also interested how far situated characteristics modulate the putative embodied placevalue representation. To address these questions we investigated the influence of place-value information on manual pointing movements in a magnitude comparison task in which participants had to directly touch on the larger number instead of pressing a corresponding button.…”

“…In particular, we hypothesised that if the placevalue structure of Arabic numbers is an at least partly embodied concept (following the account of Myachykov et al, 2014), activation of this concept should lead to systematic influences on participants pointing behaviour. Based on the properties of the place-value structure of Arabic numbers (i.e., the larger the leftmost digits the larger the entire number), we expected a leftward bias in participants pointing reactions towards the tens digit reflecting the experienced relevance of the tens digits when number magnitude is task relevant.…”

“…The predominant activation of the tens position may have triggered a sensory-motor association with left space, as the tens occupy the leftmost slot in the place-value notation of two-digit Arabic numbers. Following the embodied perspective of the TEST model of Myachykov et al (2014), we posit that systematic long-term associations between the tens position with left and the unit position with right, experienced during writing and reading of Arabic numbers in place-value notation, have become part of the conceptual knowledge of two-digit numbers. This argument of a physically spatial (left-right) differentiation between tens and units is further corroborated by a recent study evaluating the association between place-value processing reflected by the UD compatibility effect and mental rotation.…”

“…H. Fischer & Brugger, 2011). In their so-called tropic, embodied and situated theory of cognition (TEST) Myachykov, Scheepers, Fischer, and Kessler (2014) suggested a hierarchical taxonomy trying "to explain how the world, the body and the context interact as components of multimodal [knowledge] representations" (Myachykov et al, 2014, p. 444) by distinguishing between tropic, embodied and situated aspects of cognitive representations. In this context tropic aspects refer to effects of the objective physical world (e.g., gravity or light from above) on cognitive representations.…”

Training the equidistant principle of number line spacing

“…From this spatial association, the hypothesis arose that our interactions with the physical world may shape the characteristics of the mental number line suggesting embodied representations of numbers (e.g., Domahs et al 2010;Moeller et al 2012; see Fischer and Brugger 2011;Fischer 2012;Myachykov et al 2013 for theoretical elaborations).…”