Embodiment Theory

Abstract

Embodied cognition (EC) views propose that cognition is shaped by the kind of body that organisms possess. We give an overview of recent literature on EC, highlighting the differences between stronger and weaker versions of the theory. We also illustrate the debates on the notions of simulation, of representation, and on the role of the motor system for cognition, and we address some of the most important research topics. Future challenges concern the understanding of how abstract concepts and words are represented, and the relationship between EC and other promising approaches, the distributional views of meaning and the extended mind views.

Full text

a0005 Embodiment Theories
Anna M Borghi, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy; and Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, Italian National
Research Council, Rome, Italy
Fausto Caruana, University of Parma, Parma, Italy; and Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Brain Center for Social and Motor
Cognition, Parma, Italy
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Abstract
abspara0010 Embodied cognition (EC) views propose that cognition is shaped by the kind of body that organisms possess. We give an
overview of recent literature on EC, highlighting the differences between stronger and weaker versions of the theory. We also
illustrate the debates on the notions of simulation, of representation, and on the role of the motor system for cognition, and
we address some of the most important research topics. Future challenges concern the understanding of how abstract
concepts and words are represented, and the relationship between EC and other promising approaches, the distributional
views of meaning and the extended mind views.
s0005 Definition of Embodied Cognition
p0010 Embodied cognition theory (EC) is intended as a response to
the increasing dominance of the classic representational and
computational theories of mind (RCTM) in cognitive science.
Despite many versions of embodied theories, there are at least
two commonalities between all EC approaches. The first is the
view that cognitive processes are constrained by perception and
motor processes, and therefore that the kind of body possessed
by organisms shapes their cognition. The second is the refusal
of the information processing model of the mind, and of the
metaphor of the mind equated with software that manipulates
symbols.
p0015 The view that perception and action contribute to cognition
is in contrast with the classic view of cognition as separated
from sensorimotor control, and that perception, cognition, and
action are temporally and functionally independent processes.
In contrast to this “sandwich model of the mind”(
bib57
Hurley,
1998), proponents of EC underline the circularity of these
processes, inspiring research programs aimed at showing that
action influences both perception (
bib29
Creem-Regehr and Kunz,
2010;
bib79
Proffitt, 2006;
bib102
Witt, 2011) and abstract thought
(
bib52
Goldin-Meadow and Beilock, 2010).
p0020 The second tenet, that is, the refusal of the view that
cognitive processes involve computations on amodal repre-
sentations (RCTM), leads to two different variants of EC. A first
critique is limited to the view that representations are amodal
symbols, expressed in propositional format and arbitrarily
linked to their referents (
bib37
Fodor, 1975). In contrast, EC suggests
that all concepts rely on the reactivation (or the simulation) of
the sensorimotor experience with objects or events they refer to.
The propositional approach has to face the symbol-grounding
problem (
bib55
Harnad, 1990). In a nutshell, arbitrary symbols
can be grounded only in other symbols, but in order to
understand what objects are, we need to exit this vicious
circle, ‘grounding’the word meaning. These EC
proponents, however, accept the computational side of
the RCTM, bridging the gap between RCTM and EC.
Accordingly, many EC theorists assume that cognition
consists in computations on representation, but endorsing
action-oriented representations expressed in bodily formats,
including visuomotor, somatosensory, affective, and intero-
ceptive formats (
bib53
Goldman and de Vignemont, 2009). This EC
variant is an improved version of the computational
functionalisms on which RCTM is based. A more drastic
critique to the second tenet comes from radical versions of
EC (REC;
bib22
Chemero, 2009;
bib58
Hutto and Myin, 2013;
bib95
van Elk
et al., 2010;
bib100
Wilson and Golonka, 2013) that refuse the
assumption that cognition requires content of any kind. This
antirepresentational version of EC abandons the idea that
cognition requires content-involving representations and,
given the RCTM mantra “no computation without representa-
tion”, it also discards the computational thesis. Accordingly,
REC considers cognition as a dynamical system characterized
by continuously and interdependently changing variables that
are better described by dynamic system theory (e.g.,
bib86
Spivey,
2007) than by representational explanations.
p0025
EC studies cover most areas of psychology and cognitive
neuroscience (
bib14
Borghi and Pecher, 2011;
bib30
Davis and Markman,
2012;
bib21
Chatterjee, 2010;
bib54
Gentner, 2010), including
development (
bib88
Thelen and Smith, 1993), social cognition and
emotions (
bib72
Niedenthal, 2007;
bib85
Semin and Smith, 2008;
bib9
Becchio et al., 2010), attention, memory, and language
(
bib7
Barsalou, 2008;
bib74
Pecher and Zwaan, 2005;
bib71
Meteyard et al.,
2012). Intriguing combinations between different research
areas are emerging, including tighter relations between
studies on attention, action, and social cognition (
bib38
Galantucci
and Sebanz, 2009;
bib64
Knoblich et al., 2011). Aside from
psychology and cognitive neuroscience, EC theories have
developed in a variety of areas, including robotics and
computer science (
bib103
Ziemke, 2002;
bib3
Arbib, 2006), linguistics
(
bib65
Lakoff, 2012), and philosophy (
bib22
Chemero, 2009;
bib73
Nöe, 2004;
bib58
Hutto and Myin, 2013;
bib78
Prinz, 2002;
bib84
Shapiro, 2011).
s0010
Perception versus Action?
p0030
All EC approaches ascribe a crucial relevance to perception and
action. However, the role played by perception or by action for
cognition has been differently emphasized depending on the
AU1
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cultural tradition on which the various approaches relied. The
theoretical background of EC can be found in American
empiricism and pragmatism and in European phenomeno-
logical tradition. Even if some EC approaches underline the
role of perception and other stress the importance of action, the
two views are not incompatible; in addition, most EC theories
stress the role of both, arguing that cognition is grounded in the
sensorimotor system (see
bib11
Borghi, 2005 for discussion).
p0035 The role of perception has been underlined in particular
in research influenced by phenomenology. The “primacy
of perception”was stressed by early phenomenologists,
including Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, and inherited by
contemporary phenomenologists (
bib39
Gallagher and Zahavi,
2008). Furthermore, phenomenology impressed some of the
early proponents of embodiment theories (
bib96
Varela et al.,
1991;
bib90
Thompson, 2007). Finally, the interest in
phenomenology offered new tools to study the body and its
extensions (e.g.,
bib10
Berlucchi and Aglioti, 1997;
bib93
Umiltà et al.,
2008) and the relationship between the body and the self,
stressing the dichotomy between body schema and body
image, and that between sense of body ownership and sense
of agency (
bib92
Tsakiris et al., 2007). The role of perceptual
aspects has also been emphasized relying on the empiricist
philosophical tradition, in particular the philosophers Hume
and Locke. Work by Barsalou and, on the philosophical side,
by
bib78
Prinz (2002), is in continuity with this tradition.
According to the Perceptual Symbols Theory (
bib6
Barsalou,
1999), no transduction process from sensorimotor experience
to symbolic knowledge is necessary. Perceptual symbols, the
building block of knowledge, have the combinatorial and
productivity characteristics of arbitrary symbols, but they are
modal rather than amodal, because they reflect the sensory
qualities of the perceived entities. Stressing the role of
perception has led some authors to remark the fact that
bodily states do play a role but not an exclusive one. For this
reason Barsalou and collaborators have proposed using the
label ‘grounded cognition’instead of ‘embodied cognition’to
underline the fact that cognition is grounded in a variety of
situations, situated simulations, and not only in bodily states
(
bib7
Barsalou, 2008;
bib75
Pezzulo et al., 2011).
p0040 The American pragmatist tradition and the ecological
psychology of
bib47
Gibson (1979) represent the theoretical
background of the approaches that put a strong emphasis on
action for cognition. Furthermore, an emphasis on the role of
the motor system and of the overt behavior comes from the
ordinary language philosophers, such as Gilbert Ryle and the
late Wittgenstein. As nicely summarized by
bib101
Wilson (2002) at
the beginning of the EC wave, the principle underlying EC is
that “knowledge is for action” – knowledge is both grounded
and oriented to action. Accordingly, many authors described
EC as a pragmatic turn in cognitive science, according to which
cognition should not be understood as providing models of the
world but as subservient to action, being grounded in senso-
rimotor coupling and in the ongoing interaction with the
external world (
bib33
Engel et al., 2013). In psychology, work on
memory and on language grounding by Glenberg exemplifies
this motor-oriented approach. In his BBS paper of 1997,
significantly entitled “What Memory Is For,”Glenberg argued
that memory has an important adaptive role to support us in
situated actions.
p0045
In neuroscience, the role played by the motor system in
perception and cognition was emphasized by the research on
the mirror and canonical neurons (
bib43
Gallese et al., 1996; review:
bib83
Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia, 2010). Mirror and canonical neurons
are located in the motor system and contribute to action
execution. However, they support different cognitive
processes. Mirror neurons are activated during the execution
of a specific action and the observation of the same action
performed by another agent, thus suggesting that the passive
observation of actions recruits the corresponding motor
representation in the observer motor system. After their
discovery in different stations of the motor system, including
the primary motor cortex, other similar mirror mechanisms
have been found in emotional and sensory areas, suggesting
that the perception and comprehension of others’intentional
actions, emotional expressions, and somatosensory
experiences depends on an implicit and automatic simulation
within the sensorimotor system (see
bib16
Buxbaum and Kalenine,
2010 for an embodied view according to which mirror
neurons are not sufficient for comprehension of actions). The
interpretation of the mirror neuron system offered by the
Embodied Simulation theory (
bib40
Gallese, 2001), according to
which the observation of others’behavior triggers an
automatic, subpersonal, and preconceptual simulation,
provides an embodied account of intersubjectivity, in
antithesis to the two cognitivist explanations of the theory of
mind abilities (the theory–theory and the simulation theory).
Furthermore, the mirror mechanisms opened new important
perspectives in research on cognitive processes such as language
comprehension and imitation, as well as a new key to interpret
the social deficit in autism. Canonical neurons are premotor
neurons that discharge both when interacting with objects and
when passively observing them. Their discovery supports the
view that perception involves the motor system and, in
particular, the preparation of possible interactions with objects.
This discovery contributed to lunching studies and research on
object affordances.
p0050
Ideomotor theories (
bib77
Prinz, 1997) represent an important
family of theories investigating the relationship between
perception and action, and the goal-directed character of
action. According to one of the most influent ones, the
Theory of Event Co ding (TEC) (
bib56
Hommel et al., 2001),
perceived events and actions rely on common
representational structures, that is, they are represented by
a network of feature codes. TEC predicts that perception is
facilitated in case of overlap between the action an
organism perceives and the action he or she is able to
perform. Evidence in support of ideomotor theories ranges
from imitation to attention to social cognition. For
example, the co mpatibility between observed actions and
responses influences the attribution of personal traits:
finger-key responses lead to faster identification of individ-
uals typing rat her than performing sporty a ctivities (
bib5
Bach
and Tipper, 200 7). The mirro r neuron system represents
the neural underpinnings of ideomotor theories: our brain
resonates more when observing actions we can reproduce
than unknown action. Motor resonance ha s been
documented in a variety of areas; a notable one concerns
empathy for others’pain (e.g.,
bib4
Avenanti et al., 2010;
bib59
Iacoboni, 2009).
2Embodiment Theories
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s0015 The Notion of Simulation
p0055 The concept of simulation was originally introduced in the field
of social cognition, to account for our folk psychological abil-
ities to predict others’behavior by ascribing mental states. This
account was intended as a response to the theory–theory
perspective, which conceives folk psychology as a theoretical
and observational enterprise, suggesting that mindreading is
rather based on using ones’own subpersonal models as the
measure of everyone else’s. In a seminal paper,
bib44
Gallese and
Goldman (1998) suggested a possible role of mirror neurons
in mental simulation. More recently, theorists differentiated
between an explicit (non-embodied) simulation, based on
the view that simulation depends on a deliberative inference,
versus an implicit, embodied simulation involving
subpersonal activation of mirror mechanisms and shared
representations (
bib41
Gallese, 2005). Both versions were criticized
by proponents of REC, suggesting that the resonance
processes, including the mirror mechanisms, are part of the
processes that underlie intersubjective ‘direct perception’
rather than simulation (
bib39
Gallagher and Zahavi, 2008).
p0060 Besides of its use in social cognition, the concept of simu-
lation was also used to account for the recruitment of the same
perceptual, motor, and emotional system during the interac-
tion with objects and entities in the world, as well as during
imagery and language comprehension. Starting from this
general idea, this notion now has a variety of connotations,
also due to the different nuances that EC has assumed. Some
authors intend simulation as a form of reenactment “of
perceptual, motor, and introspective states acquired during
experience with the world, body, and mind”(
bib7
Barsalou, 2008),
while others, underlining its predictive aspects, prefer to use the
term ‘motor simulation’, intending it as a form of action
preparation (
bib41
Gallese, 2005; Grush, 2004). In addition, while
some authors underline the implicit, automatic aspect of
simulation (
bib60
Jeannerod, 2006), others tend to equate it with
a form of (motor) mental imagery, which may occur
a posteriori (
bib31
Decety and Grèzes, 2006). Finally, in their
attempt to underlie dynamic and flexible aspects of cognition
and to reject representations, REC avoids using the notion of
simulation, particularly if intended as a form of reenactment.
s0020 The Agenda
p0065 EC theories have received ample support in a variety of
domains. We will refer to some important areas, with no
pretense of being exhaustive.
s0025 Affordances
p0070 The notion of affordance (
bib47
Gibson, 1979) refers to the fact that
objects invite organisms to act and suggest actions. For
example, apples suggest grasping to humans, but not to
worms. Affordances are therefore interactive properties,
emerging from the relationship between organisms and
environment, and pertain at the same time to perception and
action. In the last years many studies have focused on
affordances and ‘micro-affordances’, a term introduced by
Ellis and Tucker (2000) to highlight both continuities and
discontinuities with Gibson. Microaffordances are more
specific that Gibson’s affordances: they refer to action
components (e.g., grasping) suitable for specific objects, thus
implying object recognition. Furthermore, while Gibson’s
view is externalist and not focused on brain representations,
microaffordances are neural representations corresponding
to patterns in the brain of conjoint perception and
action experiences. Numerous studies have demonstrated
that observing objects activates affordances (e.g.,
grasping actions); recent work on affordances highlights
their flexibility and contextual dependency (review:
bib89
Thill
et al., 2013).
s0030
Concepts and Words
p0075
According to all EG views, concepts and language are grounded
in perception, action, and emotional systems (reviews:
bib26
Coello
and Bartolo, 2012;
bib36
Fischer and Zwaan, 2008;
bib42
Gallese, 2008;
bib61
Jirak et al., 2010;
bib99
Willems and Hagoort, 2007; special issues:
bib18
Cappa and Pulvermüller, 2012;
bib17
Cangelosi and Borghi, in
press).
p0080
The influential Perceptual Symbols Theory (
bib6
Barsalou, 1999)
states that understanding concepts depends on the ability to
form and use simulations. Thus, to decide whether
a telephone rings we need to form a multisensory simulation.
The phone ring is not stored in propositional terms, as
a mental word; rather, it is the acoustic record of previous
experiences with phones. This view received great impulse
thanks to studies on representation of categories in the
modal areas of the brain (
bib70
Martin, 2007). EC views contrast
with domain specific approaches, according to which in the
brain there are innate categorical subsystems. Rather,
concepts are intended as modality-specific distributed and
flexible representations (Kiefer and Pulvermüller, 2012).
p0085
In continuity with this view,
bib104
Zwaan (2004) proposes that
comprehending language implies activating a simulation
involving the motor system (see also
bib62
Kemmerer, 2006).
Many experiments have demonstrated that the activation in
perception and motor areas during language comprehension
is sensitive to the effectors (foot, hand, mouth), to kinds of
affordances, to the bodily space (
bib35
Ferri et al., 2011), to the
direction implied by sentences (toward vs. away from the
body) (
bib48
Glenberg and Kaschak, 2002), and to the emotional
connotations of words (we tend to attract positive words and
reject negative ones,
bib23
Chen and Bargh, 1999); furthermore, it
is not purely automatic but highly flexible (
bib94
van Dam
et al., 2012).
p0090
In the strong EC perspective proposed by
bib49
Glenberg (1997),
concepts support us in selectively focusing on affordances
allowing us to interact appropriately with objects. Hence,
concepts are constrained by the kind of body we possess; for
example, we conceive cups in terms of their distance from us,
weight, and so forth –more generally, in terms of what we
can do with them.
bib45
Gallese and Lakoff (2005) argued that
concepts and language exploit at a more sophisticated and
higher level the multimodal character and the basic structures
of the sensorimotor system (
bib1
Anderson, 2010). In continuity
with these views,
bib50
Glenberg and Gallese (2012) have
proposed that mechanisms of motor control have been
exploited for language learning, comprehension, and
AU3
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production (on the involvement of the same systems
during language comprehension and production, see also
bib81
Pulvermüller and Fadiga, 2010;
bib76
Pickering, and Garrod, in
press; on the idea that language evolves from manual
gestures,
bib46
Gentilucci and Corballis, 2006).
s0035 Body and Emotion
p0095 Given its disembodied view, cognitivism rarely paid due
attention to the study of the body. In contrast, EC recovered
some conceptual distinctions from phenomenology and
neuropsychology, thus allowing neuroscientific investigations
on the bodily experience and providing new insights on topics
such as tool use, agency, and emotion.
p0100 The recovery of the distinction between body image and
body schema, the former being a mental construct or a set of
beliefs about the body, and the latter being a nonconscious
model that monitors posture and movement (
bib39
Gallagher and
Zahavi, 2008), brings to a deeper understanding of different
psychological disorders and, at the same time, shows that
a number of objects, including prostheses and tools, can be
incorporated into the body schema and perceived as part of
one’s own body. Notably, neurophysiological and
neuropsychological evidence showed that the use of tools
operating in the far space entails the updating of the map of
the body schema and, as a consequence, it extends in the new
operational space the peripersonal space anchored to the body
(
bib69
Maravita and Iriki, 2004). The above-mentioned distinction
between sense of ownership and sense of agency (
bib92
Tsakiris
et al., 2007) is a further phenomenological distinction
adopted by EC researchers, which has been largely used in the
study of the bodily self, becoming a useful tool in the study of
mental disorders such as schizophrenia (
bib34
Ferri et al., 2012).
p0105 Finally, the attention to the bodily representations breathed
new life into the debate on emotion. EC retrieved and renewed
the somatic theory proposed by William James, according to
which the emotional experience consists in the central repre-
sentation of the bodily response to an emotional stimulus.
New evidence revealed the existence of an afferent neural
system that represents the physiological condition of the
physical body (interoception), thus constituting a central
representation of the ‘material self’founding subjective feelings
and emotions (
bib28
Craig, 2002). Remarkably, this new link
between interoception and emotion suggested that different
psychological disorders, including neuroticism, social phobia,
anxiety, and eating disorders, could be dependent on
anomalous interpretations of the bodily interoceptive
feedback. At the same time, the link between body and
emotion contributed to the formulation of the ‘facial
feedback hypotheses’(
bib72
Niedenthal, 2007), according to which
the facial feedback affects the emotional experience; it follows
that the motor production of emotional expression is part of
the emotional experience, as predicted by early American
pragmatists (
bib19
Caruana and Gallese, 2012).
s0040 Critiques and Debates
p0110 EC has been the object of a lot of criticism. One of the most
debated issues concerns the role played by the motor system in
concepts and word processing. In an influential paper,
bib68
Mahon
and Caramazza (2008) argued that, even though the evidence
showing that the motor system is involved in conceptual and
language processing is indisputable, it can be explained
through activation spreading from ‘disembodied concepts’to
the sensorimotor system interfacing with them. Hence,
the role played by the sensorimotor system would be
only epiphenomenal and not necessary for language
comprehension. If it was necessary, then disruptions of the
sensorimotor areas should impair language processing.
p0115
In contrast with this view, EC proponents argue that the
motor system involvement is constitutive of the process. This is
supported by evidence showing that the motor system activa-
tion occurs early, in an automatic, bottom-up fashion, and that
it is somatotopic, that is, different areas of the brain are acti-
vated during processing of words related to action with
different effectors, such as arms, legs, and mouth (pick, kick,
lick) (
bib80
Pulvermüller, 2005). The discussion is still open,
however, because there are some controversial results. For
example, not all studies have found early activation of the
motor and premotor cortices during language processing; in
addition, even if the motor system is modulated during
language comprehension, there is evidence of both
interference and facilitation (
bib98
Willems and Franken, 2012);
finally, evidence on patients is clear (review:
bib81
Pulvermüller
and Fadiga, 2010), but some clinical studies suggest that
motor system lesions do not always lead to comprehension
impairments. An interesting solution to this debate is
advanced by enactivists (
bib95
van Elk et al., 2010). As it has been
proposed, the issue of necessity implies the idea that words
are characterized by a core meaning, but words are action
oriented and contextual dependent, and the human brain is
plastic. This makes it possible to predict that comprehension
is also possible when sensorimotor activation during
language comprehension does not imply forms of
reenactment.
s0045
Future Challenges
p0120
Abstract concepts are a challenge. One of the main challenges
of EC is to account for concepts and words without concrete
referents, such as ‘phantasy’. Several EC theories of abstract
concepts and words (ACWs) have been proposed (review:
Pecher et al., 2 011; special issues:
bib14
Borghi and Pecher, 2011;
bib91
Tomasino and Ru miati, in press). Some views underline
that the systems involved in concrete word representation
are responsible also for representation of ACW, since not
only concrete but also abstra ct words activ ate the motor
system. Other EC theories underline the differences between
concrete word s and ACWs. The most influential theory
claims that abstract concepts are represented in terms of
concrete ones, through the mediation of metaphors (
bib66
Lakoff
and Johnson, 1999); for example, the abstract notion of
time is explained in terms of the co ncept of space
(
bib20
Casasanto and Boroditsky, 2008). According to another
view, ACWs differ from concrete ones due to their content:
ACWs rely more on situations and introspective features
(
bib6
Barsalou, 1999), and activate more emotions (
bib97
Vigliocco
et al., 2013). Recently multiple representation theories have
4Embodiment Theories
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been proposed (
bib32
Dove, 2011;
bib8
Barsalou et al. , 2008). For
example, according to the W ords As Social Tools (WAT)
view (
bib13
Borghi et al., 2011), both concrete words and ACWs
are grounded in sensorimotor systems; however, for ACWs
linguistic information p lays a major role, due to their
acquisition modality: they are primarily acquired through
words rather than through interaction with the ir referents,
and verbal labels help assemble sparse sensorimotor
experiences.
p0125 Promising future directions concern the relationship
between EC and two views emerging in different areas
(computer science and philosophy), that is, distributional
approaches (DA) to meaning and extended mind (EM) views.
p0130 DA and EC have been typically considered as antithetical.
For example, according to the embodied Indexical Hypothesis
(
bib51
Glenberg and Robertson, 2000), words’referents evoke
affordances, and these affordances constrain the relationships
between words. In DA, meaning derives from the statistical
co-occurrence of words in text corpora: from the relationship
between associate words (real words, not mental words), not
between words and their referents. Therefore words are not
embodied, and the symbol-grounding problem is present. This
distributive information is, however, able to account for many
empirical findings, such as semantic priming. Recently some
hybrid approaches have been proposed (review:
bib2
Andrews et al.,
in press). In hybrid views, conceptual processing is both
linguistic and embodied, depending on the task (
bib67
Louwerse,
2011). In EC multiple representation accounts, instead, access
to meaning occurs only through simulation, but linguistic
shallow tasks such as lexical decision can be performed
without necessarily using full embodied simulations:
linguistic distributional information can be used as
a shortcut, allowing fast responses (
bib8
Barsalou et al., 2008;
bib27
Connell and Lynnot, in press).
p0135 According to the extended mind (EM) view, the mind is not
limited within the boundaries of our head/brain but is rather
distributed in our brain, body, and external devices, which
possess the power to augment our computational abilities
(
bib25
Clark and Chalmers, 1998). Even if many proponents of the
EM view favor an embodied view, EC and EM views are
typically considered independent perspectives, both because
EM is more widespread in philosophy than in neuroscience
and because of its functionalist flavor (
bib63
Kiverstein and Clark,
2009). However, interesting convergences between these two
areas are emerging (see
bib15
Borghi et al., 2013;
bib12
Borghi and
Cimatti, 2010;
bib24
Clark, 2008), particularly in research on the
sense of the body and on bodily extensions.
See also
ED1 :14110; 57024; 24056; 56016; 56023; Situated
Cognition: Origins/Social Embodiment; 57022; 81032; 23204.
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Relavent Websites
http://laral.istc.cnr.it/borghi/.
http://www.iit.it/people/fausto-caruana.html.
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