The embodied mind extended: using words as social tools.
Frontiers in Psychology January 1, 2013 Anna M Borghi, Claudia Scorolli, Daniele Caligiore et al.
The paper proposes integrating the extended mind view and the embodied-grounded view of cognition by introducing the idea of "Words As social Tools" (WAT). It argues that words, due to their social and public nature, function as quasi-external devices that extend cognition, similar to how tools enlarge bodily space and modify the sense of body. The authors review literature on tool-use and words as tools, presenting evidence that word use extends space close to the body. They outline neural processes that may underpin this bodily space extension and discuss how combining both perspectives overcomes limitations of each view alone.