Francesco Ianì

Università degli Studi di Torino | UNITO · Dipartimento di Psicologia

The embodied approach states that memory traces are retrieved, at least in part, through a sensorimotor simulation of the original events, i.e., during retrieval we use our body and its sensorimotor pathways to simulate what happened during encoding. Thus, body manipulations that are incongruent with the motor elements involved at encoding should m...

Based on the assumption that spatial reasoning relies on the construction of mental models of the states of affairs described in the premises, and on evidence that sensory-motor imagery can enhance cognitive abilities, we hypothesised that imagining moving the objects mentioned in the premises to the specific spatial locations should favour spatial...

This is an ongoing study describing the activities undertaken as part of the research project EmpAI: Empowerment of AI competencies. The goal is to test the effectiveness of a school-based training program to promote AI learning skills. Because it is important to establish evidence-based practices, as part of the project we identified four basic ab...

The rubber hand illusion (RHI), that is, the experience of an artificial hand as beinga real body part, has been studied by various scholars. This illusion is often used todemonstrate many theoretical constructs, such as the“plasticity”of our body repre-sentation. However, upon closer examination, it is surprising how the RHI has beeninterpreted fr...

Nelle ultime due decadi di storia delle scienze cognitive si è assistito al proliferare di ricerche esplicitamente ispirate alla cosiddetta teoria dell’«Embodied Cognition » (EC). Sebbene le sfaccettature con cui tale termine viene interpretato siano molteplici, spesso non convergenti e dalle implicazioni non sempre chiaramente testabili, il presen...

Ringrazio tutti gli autori per i loro preziosi e generosi commenti. L’intento primario dell’articolo bersaglio (Ianì, 2022) era quello di sollecitare una discussione e uno sguardo critico sull’Embodied Cognition (EC). La domanda di fondo era se l’avvento dell’EC avesse rappresentato effettivamente una rivoluzione. All’interno di questo panorama, al...

Nel loro intervento, Gatti e collaboratori (2022) affrontano in modo analitico il rapporto esistente tra le confabulazioni e le false memorie. Nel tracciare questo confronto emergono in modo nitido alcune delle principali dinamiche del sistema neuro-cognitivo responsabili delle cosiddette «distorsioni della memoria». Tra queste vi è indubbiamente l...

Purpose Studies on the moral judgment of offenders conducted within a neo-Kolhbergian framework found that offenders exhibit more primitive thinking about moral issues compared to nonoffenders. The purpose of this study is to explore, within the mental model theory, the role of reasoning in moral judgments of offenders, considering both similaritie...

Per definizione, la psicologia cognitiva sembra occuparsi di tutto ciò che non ha a che fare con il corpo: processi cognitivi, rappresentazioni mentali, tracce mnestiche etc. Nel presente articolo, l'autore cerca di evidenziare come invece, al-meno nelle ultime due decadi, il corpo sia entrato prepotentemente al centro del dibattito di tutte quelle...

The main assumption underlying the present investigation is that action observation elicits a mandatory mental simulation representing the action forward in time. In Experiment 1 participants observed pairs of photos portraying the initial and the final still frames of an action video; then they observed a photo depicting the very same action but e...

Discourse comprehension relies on the construction of a mental model that represents the unfolding in time of the events described. In causal scenarios, where the action of one agent (the enabler) temporally precedes and enables the action of another agent (the causer), discourse may reflect the underlying event structure by describing the enabler'...

Action observation triggers by default a mental simulation of action unfolding in time. We assumed that this simulation is "embodied": the body is the medium through which observer's sensorimotor modalities simulate the observed action. The participants in two experiments observed videos, each depicting the central part of an action performed by an...

This review aims to explore what I call the "Embodiment Cost Hypothesis" (ECH), according to which, when humans "embody" a part of the world other than their bodies, a measurable cost is detectable on their real bodies. The review analyzes experimental evidence in favor of the ECH by examining studies from different research fields, including studi...

The role of body posture during retrieval of memory traces: When posture does not facilitate memory The present investigation concerns the role of body posture in memory for selfperformed actions. A main assumption is that the process involves sensory-motor simulation of the original experience; the same sensory-motor components involved in encodin...

Individuals misrecognise as seen the never-presented natural continuation of an action. These false memories derive from the running of kinematic mental models of the actions seen, which rest on motor inferences from implicit knowledge. We verified an implied prediction: kinematic false memories should be detectable even in children. The participan...

This paper omitted a reference: Dutriaux, L., & Gyselinck, V. (2016). Learning is better with the hands free: The role of posture in the memory of manipulable objects. PLOS ONE, 11(7), e0159108. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0159108.

This review aims at exploring the role of the body and its sensorimotor processes in memory. Recent theories have suggested that memories can profitably be seen as mental simulations consisting in the reactivation of sensorimotor patterns originally associated with events at encoding, rather than amodal mental representations. The sensorimotor mode...

In the present study, the persistence of personal false memories (FM) after social feedback that denies their truth was assessed with a procedure similar to Nash, Wade and Lindsay (2009b). Participants imitated actions performed by the experimenter (Session 1) and watched a doctored video with performed and critical “fake” actions (Session 2), foll...

Several theoretical approaches suggest that language comprehension and action observation rely on similar mental simulations. Granted that these two simulations partially overlap, we assumed that simulations stemming from action observations are more direct than those stemming from action phrases. The implied prediction was that simulation from act...

Il presente studio mira ad indagare se la capacità di dimenticare intenzionalmente frasi che rappresentano azioni possa venire modulata dall’osservazione di gesti. La memorizzazione di una serie di parole o frasi è facilitata se al momento della codifica il discente osserva gesti congruenti con il significato del materiale da apprendere, rispetto...

A vast literature on false memories reveals that they can result from several mental processes. We assume that false memories can result also from a kinematic mental simulation that individuals build in the attempt to understand what is going on when they observe a state of affairs. The participants in our study were invited to observe for 10 secon...

Memory for action phrases improves in the listeners when the speaker accompanies them with gestures compared to when the speaker stays still. Since behavioral studies revealed a pivotal role of the listeners' motor system, we aimed to disentangle the role of primary motor and premotor cortices. Participants had to recall phrases uttered by a speake...

Memory for series of action phrases improves in listeners when speakers accompany each phrase with congruent gestures compared to when speakers stay still. Studies reveal that the listeners’ motor system, at encoding, plays a crucial role in this enactment effect. We present two experiments on gesture observation, which explored the role of the lis...

Our investigation focuses on memory for scenes depicted in photos. According to the mental model theory, the observation of a static scene depicted in a photo which portrays an actor near to perform an action can trigger a kinematic mental simulation of that action unfolding in time. The deriving prediction is that such a kinematic mental model sup...

Gestures are movements of our hands and arms that do not lead to a direct physical change in the world but that can directly change our minds. Recent theoretical advances and findings in cognitive science suggest that these body movements can play a wide role on cognition. This article provides a review on the role of gestures produced or observed,...

A well-established literature reveals that a speaker’s gestures have beneficial effects on the listener’s memory for speech. A main assumption of our investigation is that gestures improve memory through the exploitation of the listener’s motor system. We tested this prediction in four experiments in which the participants listened to action senten...

The deep comprehension of a text is tantamount to the construction of an articulated mental model of that text. The number of correct recollections is an index of a learner's mental model of a text. We assume that another index of comprehension is the timing of the gestures produced during text recall; gestures are simultaneous with speech when the...

The enactment effect is the phenomenon according to which a series of phrases, each depicting an action, are learnt and memorized better if accompanied by congruent gestures at learning phase. A series of experiments in the literature demonstrated that, respect to the simple verbal condition in which the phrases are not accompanied by gestures, the...

The investigation of the ability to perceive, recognize, and judge upon social intentions, such as communicative intentions, on the basis of body motion is a growing research area. Cross-cultural differences in ability to perceive and interpret biological motion, however, have been poorly investigated so far. Progress in this domain strongly depend...

Previous research has shown that performing joint actions can lead to the representation of both one's own and others' actions. In the present study we explored the influence of co-representation on response stopping. Are joint actions more difficult to stop than solo actions? Using a variation of the stop-signal task, we found that participants ne...

Classical studies on enactment have highlighted the beneficial effects of gestures performed in the encoding phase on memory for words and sentences, for both adults and children. In the present investigation, we focused on the role of enactment for learning from scientific texts among primary-school children. We assumed that enactment would favor...