Theresa S. S. Schilhab

Aarhus University | AU · Research Centre for Future Technology, Culture and Learning

The use of smart technology (ST) has dramatically increased in recent years, with smartphones and tablets affording use in all locations and for innumerable purposes. Consequently, we relate differently to our surroundings – a condition we refer to as 'offline neglect'. This paper reports the results of a qualitative, small-scale project investigat...

In this study, we test and discuss a Danish communication and entertainment mobile application (app) aimed at children aged 10 to 12 years for use by families and schools. The app, Tidslommen, has been developed by Museum Vestsjælland, a collaboration among natural history museums in Denmark. Tidslommen features audio and video guides and augmented...

Digital texts have for decades been a challenge for reading research, creating a range of questions about reading and a need for new theories and concepts. In this paper, we focus on materialities of texts and suggest an embodied, enacted, and extended approach to the research on digital reading. We refer to findings showing that cognitive activiti...

This review examines the didactic use of nature experiences in science education, in primary and secondary school (7–16 years) globally. From the perspective of embodied cognition the review explores the types of nature experiences used in science teaching. Focus is on returns when we invest in nature-based science learning, such as specific academ...

Recent epidemiological studies have found that exposure to nature during childhood can substantially reduce the risk of developing ADHD. In 2009, Taylor and Kuo presented a highly influential study that found walking in a natural environment can improve cognitive performance in children with ADHD, through a process known as attention restoration. T...

The aim of this paper is to argue for an interdisciplinary research agenda to the study of reading. We discuss the methodological and educational/practical challenges and opportunities that an embodied cognitive and distributed language perspective entails for literacy and education research. Although an increasing body of research pivots on the em...

In recent years, a new cognitive research paradigm emphasising situated and bodily cognition has gained impetus. A growing number of neuroscience studies suggest that sensory-motor experiences shape the individual’s development of concepts and language use. A commonly shared explanation of these findings proposes that when we as infants are acquiri...

Mobile phones are reportedly the most rapidly expanding e-reading device worldwide. However, the embodied, cognitive, and affective implications of smartphone-supported fiction reading for leisure (m-reading) have yet to be investigated empirically. Revisiting the theoretical work of digitization scholar Anne Mangen, we argue that the digital readi...

Published by CERLALC at: https://cerlalc.org/publicaciones/dosier-lectura-en-papel-vs-lectura-en-pantalla/ Spanish translation (by Laura Tibaquira) of: Schilhab, T., Balling, G., & Kuzmičová, A. (2018). Decreasing materiality from print to screen reading. Special issue ‘Reading in the digital era,’ eds. M. Kovač and A. van der Weel. First Monday 23...

Vi bruger smartteknologi og applikationer (apps) til underholdning, nyheder, fysisk aktivitet og social kontakt som aldrig før og kommer samtidig sjældnere ud i naturen. Det er et problem, fordi naturoplevelser styrker vores psykiske og fysiske trivsel. Hvordan kan vi støtte de yngre generationers mulighed for naturoplevelser? Kan vi fx bruge selvs...

This chapter discusses how both the biological and interactional expertise conception make cognitive sense. It argues that the concept of interactional expertise is particularly interesting with respect to meta-cognitive abilities and so-called executive functions, and that the employment of interactional expertise abilities may be an essential pri...

To what extent are cognitive processes rooted in “simple” body-environment interactions, and the situation in which they take place? And to what extent does the body-environment interaction depend on socio-cultural processes?

This article reports key findings from a quantitative online survey of everyday reading practices (N = 277) that targeted library professionals and students enrolled in an Information Science program in Denmark. The survey derived its rationale from the current upsurge in reading on smartphones but was constructed so as to give a comprehensive over...

Exposure to nature improves cognitive performance through a process of cognitive restoration. However, few studies have explored the effect in children, and no studies have explored how eye movements "in the wild" with mobile eye tracking technology contribute to the restoration process. Our results demonstrated that just a 30-min walk in a natural...

The shift from print to screen has bodily effects on how we read. We distinguish two dimensions of embodied reading: the spatio-temporal and the imaginary. The former relates to what the body does during the act of reading and the latter relates to the role of the body in the imagined scenarios we create from what we read. At the level of neurons,...

Attention Restoration Theory (ART) predicts exposure to natural environments may lead to improved cognitive performance through restoration of a limited cognitive resource, directed attention. A recent review by Ohly and colleagues (2016) uncovered substantial ambiguity surrounding details of directed attention and how cognitive restoration was tes...

Contemporary neuroscience perspectives on cognition allow for detailed understanding of the co-activity of unconscious, automatic 'bottom-up' processes and conscious 'topdown' processes. In this theoretical article I argue that by using direct experiences or metaphors, teachers can manipulate the neural foundation bottom-up or topdown so as to infl...

Several studies have addressed the differences between implicit and explicit learning. Focus has been on tacit, automated, non-conscious, procedural and incidental learning as opposed to symbolically represented learning, expressed in words. Separation of implicit and explicit learning is generally based on the absence or presence of conscious awar...

Ubevidste (bottom-up) processer har stor indflydelse på kognition. Neuroviden-skabelig empiri isaer indenfor feltet 'Grounded cognition' har i stigende grad demonstreret, at kognition er perceptuelt, multimodalt og ikke mindst sansemo-torisk funderet, helt i tråd med evolutionaere forklaringer af hvad kognition er. Hvis kognition isaer er evolution...

Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy introduces an intriguing combination of so-called ‘drives’, seemingly biologically inspired forces behind humanity’s cultural ways of relating to what is, and extensive distrust of science. Despite the Greek mythological context, the insight and the arguments provided by Nietzsche seem relevant to contemporary biolo...

Today, technology in the form of tablet computers (e.g. iPads) is crucial as a tool for learning and education. Tablets support educational activities such as archiving, word processing, and generation of academic products. They also connect with the Internet, providing access to news, encyclopaedic entries, and e-books. In addition, tablets have t...

How does knowledge of phenomena and events we have no direct experiences of emerge? Having a brain that learns from being in the world, how can we conceive of prehistoric dinosaurs, Atlantis, unicorns or even 'desire'? This book is about how abstract knowledge becomes anchored in direct experiences through well-formed conversations. Within the fram...

This chapter gives a brief introduction to studies on embodied cognition specifically on the relation between perceptual and sensomotoric processes and linguistic conceptualisations from the neuroscientific perspective to demonstrate the depth and approach of the challenge presented by the interactional expertise theory in Chap. 2. Both behavioural...

This chapter addresses derived embodiment, the process that takes us from the perceptually informed to the imagined understanding that seems constitutive of interactional expertise-like knowledge. Focus is on describing and explaining the notion of second order linguification processes. Though interactional expertise exemplifies the type of knowled...

In this chapter is the theory of contributory and interactional expertise introduced to present an example of knowledge that challenges the explanations provided by embodiment theories. The sociological theory spells out in detail what must be addressed for a neurobiological perspective to be convincing. Emphasis is on the understanding of language...

In this chapter, I focus on the characteristics of mind that may benefit from abstract knowledge acquisition. Which faculties and abilities are cultivated? How might abstract knowledge acquisition contribute to the development of differences in thinking abilities? Seemingly, if derived embodiment processes are corroborated by imagination, mental co...

Abstract knowledge acquisition inevitably challenges contemporary embodiment theories of knowledge. Beneath this challenge subsists the bigger question of humanity’s place in a real natural world. This latter tension is the actual driver that defines and ignites all discussions throughout this book. In this chapter 1 introduce the notion of interac...

This chapter begins on the note that pre-linguistic categorisation is central to the furnishing of the world. Thus, linguification becomes central only after we are cognitively anchored in reality. Hereafter, I address features central to language acquisition that I claim are crucial parameters in the explanation of abstract knowledge acquisition i...

In this chapter I turn to the implications of and obvious objections to the idea of derived embodiment. Throughout the account, I have presented a number of examples to grant the idea probability. I have implicitly endorsed the idea of the full-blown and somewhat ideal form of the derived embodiment mechanism to which interactional expertise-like k...

This chapter brings the discussion about first order and second order (derived embodiment) linguistic processes into an educational setting in recognition of the fact that the discussion is speculative. Thus, the chapter is concerned with operationalising the insight unfolded in previous chapters. Considering that concrete experiences are fundament...

The objective of this article is to review extant empirical studies of empathy in narrative reading in light of (i) contemporary literary theory, and (ii) neuroscientific studies of empathy, and to discuss how a closer interplay between neuroscience and literary studies may enhance our understanding of empathy in narrative reading. An introduction...

The embodied–grounded view of cognition and language holds that sensorimotor experiences in the form of 're-enactments' or 'simulations' are significant to the individual's development of concepts and competent language use. However, a typical objection to the explanatory force of this view is that, in everyday life, we engage in linguistic exchang...

I use the embodied cognition perspective as a prism by which to address teaching from three different approaches; external sensation, interoception and language

In disciplines traditionally studying expertise such as sociology, philosophy, and pedagogy, discussions of demarcation criteria typically centre on how and why human expertise differs from the expertise of artificial expert systems. Therefore, the demarcation criteria has been drawn between robots as formalized logical architectures and humans as...

Contemporary neuroscience seems to suggest that conceptual understanding as in reading and discourse at least in part is perceptually and sensory-somatically corroborated. In other words, conceptual knowledge seems to involve reenacting forms of perceptual experiences. However, in many aspects of life we do not have first hand experiences of the co...

In derived embodiment, intangible phenomena become as-if tangible as a result of their almost promiscuous borrowing of corporeality from experiences of real objects.

Due to technological developments, typewriting is replacing handwriting, and screen reading is replacing the reading of texts printed on paper. The field of reading and literacy research is multidisciplinary; however, we claim that, increasingly, certain theoretical paradigms (e.g., (psycho)linguistics, cognitive/educational psychology, and sociocu...

Terrence Deacon’s “The Symbolic Species” came out in 1997 and became an important participant in the renewed focusing upon the issue of the origin of man. The basic Darwinian framework agreed upon by all serious research since early 20C had left the important problem of accounting for the evolution of man’s special intellectual abilities, including...

Introduction - searching the missing links Frederik Stjernfelt, Theresa Schilhab.- Part I: The Biosemiotic Connection.- 1. Towards a semiotic cognitive science: why neither the phenomenological nor computational approaches are adequate Terrence Deacon.- 2. The Symbolic Species hypothesis revisited Frederik Stjernfelt.- 3. Peirce and Deacon on meani...

This paper theoretically examines the interplay between cognition and bodily involvement in relation to nature-based therapy and proposes implications for practice. With support from theory within embodied cognition and neuroscientific studies, it is argued that explicit learning is actively supported by bodily involvement with the environment. Thi...

How flexible is language? To what extent does language 'absorb' (neutralize) individual differences, for example physical interaction, in knowledge acquisition within a domain? Current neuropsychological findings show that conceptual knowledge is embodied. When reading the word 'cinnamon', supportive neural activity includes brain areas usually eng...

Interactional expertise is said to be a form of knowledge achieved in a linguistic community and, therefore, obtained entirely outside practice. Supposedly, it is not or only minimally sustained by the so-called embodied knowledge. Here, drawing upon studies in contemporary neuroscience and cognitive psychology, I propose that ‘derived’ embodiment...

Expertise depends on hours and hours of practice within a field before a state of proficiency is achieved. Normally, expert skills involve bodily knowledge associated to the practices of a field. Interactional expertise, i.e. the ability to talk competently about the field, however, is not causally dependent on bodily proficiency. Instead, interact...

Implicit and explicit learning and knowledge processes differ with respect to acquisition as well as expression of knowledge. For instance implicit knowledge improves correlative to extended practise, is normally unknown to the subject and is closed to verbal reports. On the contrary, explicit knowledge works proportionately well on single exposure...

Interactional expertise is here to stay. Undoubtedly, in some sense of the word, one can attain a linguistic expert level within a field without full scale practical immersion. In the context of the idea of embodied cognition, the claim is provocative. How can an interactional expert acquire full linguistic competence without the simultaneous bodil...

Explicit knowledge is highly valued in the traditional educational system at the expense of implicit equivalents. Why is this? Are we right to so value it? To provide an answer I attempt to characterise the relation between representations and referents of implicit and explicit knowledge. Whereas explicit representations are detached from referents...

Research on mirror self-recognition where animals are observed for mirror-guided self-directed behaviour has predominated the empirical approach to self-awareness in nonhuman primates. The ability to direct behaviour to previously unseen parts of the body such as the inside of the mouth, or grooming the eye by aid of mirrors has been interpreted as...

Scientific attempts to demonstrate advanced cognitive abilities and consciousness in nonhumans are often met with charges of anthropomorphism. In this paper, I explore reasons for this inclination and make three assertions. First, there is a discrepancy between beliefs about consciousness (hereafter the ontological concept) and the way we operate o...

This paper addresses how attribution of mind-reading abilities to human children and nonhuman primates differs in studies on mirror-based self-recognition employing the so-called mark test. In children, the employed criteria are anthropocentric, since the verbal response is accentuated. A close scrutiny of the test procedure also reveals methodolog...

The time course of the formation of synaptic long-term depression was analysed in neurons of Helix pomatia. Polysynaptic excitatory postsynaptic potentials were evoked in identified neurons by stimulation of the right pallial nerve. First, synaptic depression was observed during four consecutive series of excitatory postsynaptic potentials spaced b...

Kinetic properties of synaptic depression were analysed for excitatory postsynaptic potentials in neuron number 3 in the right pallial ganglion of Helix pomatia. It was observed that long-term depression did not only suppress the amplitudes of excitatory postsynaptic potentials but also changed the kinetics of short-term depression. Early during ea...