from the I-can-out-cogitate-you-with-one-hand-tied-behind-my-back! dept.
Talk with your hands? You might think with them too!:
How do we understand words? Scientists don't fully understand what happens when a word pops into your brain. A research group led by Professor Shogo Makioka at the Graduate School of Sustainable System Sciences, Osaka Metropolitan University, wanted to test the idea of embodied cognition. Embodied cognition proposes that people understand the words for objects through how they interact with them, so the researchers devised a test to observe semantic processing of words when the ways that the participants could interact with objects were limited.
Words are expressed in relation to other words; a "cup," for example, can be a "container, made of glass, used for drinking." However, you can only use a cup if you understand that to drink from a cup of water, you hold it in your hand and bring it to your mouth, or that if you drop the cup, it will smash on the floor. Without understanding this, it would be difficult to create a robot that can handle a real cup. In artificial intelligence research, these issues are known as symbol grounding problems, which map symbols onto the real world.
[...] "It was very difficult to establish a method for measuring and analyzing brain activity. The first author, Ms. Sae Onishi, worked persistently to come up with a task, in a way that we were able to measure brain activity with sufficient accuracy," Professor Makioka explained.
In the experiment, two words such as "cup" and "broom" were presented to participants on a screen. They were asked to compare the relative sizes of the objects those words represented and to verbally answer which object was larger—in this case, "broom." [...]
During the tests, the participants placed their hands on a desk, where they were either free or restrained by a transparent acrylic plate. [...]
Brain activity was measured with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), which has the advantage of taking measurements without imposing further physical constraints. [...]
The results showed that the activity of the left brain in response to hand-manipulable objects was significantly reduced by hand restraints. Verbal responses were also affected by hand constraints. These results indicate that constraining hand movement affects the processing of object-meaning, which supports the idea of embodied cognition. These results suggest that the idea of embodied cognition could also be effective for artificial intelligence to learn the meaning of objects. The paper was published in Scientific Reports.
Journal Reference:
Onishi, S., Tobita, K. & Makioka, S. Hand constraint reduces brain activity and affects the speed of verbal responses on semantic tasks [open]. Sci Rep 12, 13545 (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-17702-1
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday September 18 2022, @03:49AM (4 children)
Ever notice your jaw working when manipulating something tricky with your hands?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday September 18 2022, @08:01AM
When eating out in French restaurants, very often.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Sunday September 18 2022, @09:37PM (1 child)
I remember having to break my body-english habit when I first started playing on my friend's NES back in the day.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Monday September 19 2022, @03:21AM
Interesting. I had never heard of this.
I have the opposite problem. I don't need my hands in English. It's my native tongue and I have excellent command over it. However, having learned to speak a foreign language fluently late in life, I sometimes rely on hand gestures, and I'm not just talking point-and-grunt methodologies. The word broom? I don't know what that is in the other language. But I can give a set of replacement words and mime it.
Likewise, I sometimes encounter a new word. When the other person mimes a difficult word during conversation, it can sometimes help me understand what they want to communicate.
Communication is certainly an interesting problem. Not only must the speaker say something exact, and the listener must understand something exact, but both the speaker and listener must have the same understanding of that exact shared word / gesture. For instance, I can write "I want to" or "I want two", and they have different meanings. However, when spoken, they sound the same. Both the speaker spoke exactly and the listener understood exactly, but did the meaning properly survive being transmitted from one to the other? Add a gesture in there for the numeral two and there is no doubt. Or perhaps add a nod to indicate an action over the number.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 19 2022, @06:48PM
Trying to learn to play an instrument, my teeth sort of clench, I forget my mouth, and realize something's wrong when I drool a bit. I'm not singing. Maybe my brain thinks I should be.
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday September 18 2022, @07:58AM (2 children)
see if people's speech production is even richer in nudist camps.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 19 2022, @05:16PM (1 child)
"My eyes are UP HERE!"
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday September 19 2022, @06:15PM
I am not trying to look at your eyes.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 18 2022, @08:42AM
The End of the Century Mod-ban! Oh, jesus!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mojibake Tengu on Sunday September 18 2022, @11:16AM (1 child)
Symbol grounding is a kind of fixation in semantic space. It restricts possible usage of tools (and ideas) from purposes or by means different from those originally expected when a specific tool was invented and designated for.
This heavily restricts human thinking and operating. It is a major barrier in both technological and spiritual advancement.
Also, symbol grounding is a primal mechanism behind fundamental social oppression: politics, religion and slavery. A total weapon of cults against consciousness.
This limitation is unnecessary for both self-cultivating humans and advanced synthetic personoids.
Overcoming symbol grounding mind control is the very first breakthrough step on a long journey to real freedom.
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 18 2022, @12:48PM
How do you overcome it? It sounds pretty baked in.
I do wonder what the implications of this are for people who have lost the use of their hands or people who never had use of hands.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Monday September 19 2022, @02:44AM (1 child)
....if I sit on my hands, I can't talk.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 20 2022, @03:02AM
Especially true if you are talking out of your ass.