Within the ecological and enactive approaches in cognitive science, a tension exists in how the process of skill learning is understood. Skill learning can be understood in a narrow sense, as a process of bodily change over time, or in an extended sense, as a change in the structure of the animal-environment system. We propose to resolve this tension by rejecting the first understanding in...
Here we offer a thorough review of the empirical literature on the conditions under which an object, such as a tool or a prosthetic (whether real or virtual), can be experienced as being in some sense a part or extension of one's body. We discuss this literature both from the standpoint of the apparent malleability of our body representations, and also from within the framework of radical...
The nature of cognition is being re-considered. Instead of emphasizing formal operations on abstract symbols, the new approach foregrounds the fact that cognition is, rather, a situated activity, and suggests that thinking beings ought therefore be considered first and foremost as acting beings. The essay reviews recent work in Embodied Cognition, provides a concise guide to its principles,...