Embodied Perception

Natalie Sebanz & Guenther Knoblich

Embodied perception refers to a conglomerate of theoretical claims postulating that the body, its movements, and the interaction with the environment fundamentally shape people's perception of the world. All these claims have in common that they criticize “disembodied” notions of perception that are characteristic of the information-processing approach. Conceived during the cognitive revolution that made the computer the main model for the mind, the information-processing approach postulates that the function of perception is to encode and classify physical stimuli to form mental representations. These representations are then used in further cognitive (symbolic) processing. However, different strands of embodied perception take issue with the information-processing approach for different reasons. As yet, there is no set of core assumptions that every embodied perception researcher would subscribe to. This entry describes four influential notions of embodied perception by classifying them in terms of their core assumptions. An influential approach to embodied perception has ...

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