Glenberg Lab - Current Projects
Current Projects Related to Glenberg's Fall 2009 Lab:
"Mirror Neurons in Perception"
Lead Research Assistant(s):
Noah Zarr
Summary of Project:
"Embodied Statistical Learning"
Lead Research Assistant(s):
Liz Marsh
Summary of Project:
Statistical learning refers to the ability to learn about probabilistic relations among stimuli, for example, that one phoneme tends to follow another, one word tends to follow another, or one visual event tends to follow another. Often, this sort of learning occurs implicitly, simply by exposure to the stimuli. A fully realized theory of statistical learning would allow for the creation of more efficient learning tools, and it would provide a more formal definition for the abstract concept of “learning” itself.
Many theorists have proposed a domain-general learning mechanism (a sort of internal statistician) that recognizes regularities and anomalies within sense data. Others have argued that statistical learning is modality specific, meaning that there are multiple learning mechanisms that operate independently within the various perceptual domains. In both of these theories, however, the process that is described as a “learning mechanism” is not well understood. It is the goal of the present research to provide an embodied account of statistical learning. An embodied approach would certainly posit multiple modality specific learning mechanisms in favor of a single, domain-general one. Moreover, an embodied account would provide a better understanding of the mechanisms of statistical learning.
We have already demonstrated (Marsh & Glenberg, 2010) how an embodied account of statistical learningleads to novel, verified predictions. Current work is focused on extending the account and predictions to visual statistical learning and to transfer. We show how seemingly small and irrelevant changes in the body that effect eye movements (e.g., turning one's head) can disrupt statistsical learning performance.
"Embodiment of Culture"
Lead Researh Assistant(s):
Tamer Soliman
Summary of Project:
The ultimate goal of this project is to "naturalize" culture, that is, to demonstrate that culture (like cognition) is embodied and reflects our biology. What we mean by culture is often embodied in how we act: How we act toward our family and in-group, and how we act toward others. It is likely that those actions were learned early in development through social learning mechanisms and that they pervade many of our activities, thoughts, and perceptions. In the initial phases of this project we are investigating how differences in culture and self-construal (as a collectivist or individualst) may effect the perception of distance to other people. Initial findings suggest that collectivists perceive in-group members as substantially closer (or perhaps easier to interact with) than do individualists. We have related this effect to Proffitt's idea that perception is scaled by expected bodily effort, and we are currently testing the prediction that manipulating the expected difficulty of social interactions literally affects the perceived distance to another.
"Moved by Reading"
Lead Researh Assistant(s):
Summary of Project:
Moved by Reading is a two-step intervention for enhancing reading comprehension based on an embodied approach to language comprehension. In the first step, children manipulate toys (or images on a computer screen) to simulate sentences they read. The manipulation requires the child to index nouns to particular objects (thereby grounding the meaning of the nouns) and to index syntax, the who does what to whom, to their actions on the objects. The second step is to have the child imagine manipulationg the objects. Children who can successfully imagine this manipulation have become successful simulators and readers.
Several publications have demonstrated how Moved by Reading can increase reading comprehension and memory by up to two standard deviations (e.g., Glenberg et al., 2004; 2007). In addition, after learning Moved by Reading in a narrative context, children can use it to help solve mathematical story problems (Glenberg et al., 2011). That is, helping children to understand the story helps them to solve the math problem.
Our current work, in collaboration with the ASU Psychology Department's Child Study Laboratory, is to help develop an embodied pre-K curriculum. We will be using a version of Moved by Reading to help children develop active listening skills (see Marley et al., 2007) that we hope will transfer to active reading and help children become ready for formal schooling.
