Grounded cognition can be multimodal all the way down

ABSTRACT

In his position paper, Calzavarini (2023) argues that recent studies in multisensory research challenge the claim that word meaning is grounded in modality-specific representations. Here we argue that the coherence of the Grounded Cognition model does not require the modality-specificity assumption. In fact, already some “strong” versions of the model had relied on a multimodal view of the sensorimotor cortex that seems consistent with much of the evidence discussed in the paper. Next, we address some possible consequences for empirical research using behavioural methods, particularly for norming studies on word meaning. We conclude by identifying some open issues.

KEYWORDS:

• Multimodality
• conceptual representation
• concepts
• grounded Cognition
• norms
• sensorimotor cortices
• perception and action

This article refers to:

Rethinking modality-specificity in the cognitive neuroscience of concrete word meaning: a position paper

Acknowledgements

We thank other people from the Body Action Language Lab (BALLab) for continuous discussions on this topic, in particular Chiara De Livio, Ilenia Falcinelli, and Chiara Fini.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Sapienza Excellence Grant CONCEPTS IN INTERACTION WITH OTHERS AND WITH OURSELVES, [grant no RG12117A5D1EB0B3], delivered to A.M.B.