The embodied brain: cultural aspects of cognition

Abstract

Our thinking is grounded in our sensory, motor, affective, and interpersonal experience. Recent psychological studies confirmed that our cognition is not only embodied but also embedded since it arises from interactions with its social and cultural environments, which makes it possible to create image schemas and conceptual metaphors. Those schemas facilitate acting in everyday, routine situations, but make it difficult to depart from them since they are frames that limit our ability to see the alternatives. They are intricately linked to our world view and, therefore, resistant to changes because the latter threaten the feeling of security. This paper is aimed at evaluating people’s ability to change the existing schema. In the study, participants were asked to create a completely new story based on two well.known stories in which they had previously inserted the missing words. It was found that most participants exhibited considerable difficulties in departing from the formerly established schemas. Moreover, the emotionally loaded story proved to be more difficult to change.