Embodied cognition and other disciplines

Wojciechowski and Gallese’s account of embodied simulation: “when we see someone acting or expressing a given emotional or somatosensory state, we can directly grasp its content without the need to reason explicitly about it” (Wojciechowski and Gallese 2011, p14); they add that

“this can also occur when we imagine doing or perceiving something” (p17). This argument underpins their consideration of embodied simulation in the context of artistic fiction:

In fact, artistic fiction is often more powerful than real life in evoking our emotional engagement and empathic involvement. Why? Perhaps because in aesthetic experience we can temporarily suspend our grip on the world of our daily occupation. We liberate new energies and put them into the service of a new dimension that, paradoxically, can be more vivid than prosaic reality. (p19)

Guerra, a film scholar in the University of Parma, produced a paper with Gallese on embodied simulation in film theory (Gallese and Guerra 2012), which recaps the mirror neuron findings and the embodied simulation theory before investigating the difference between the ways embodied simulation works in daily life, as we use our neural resources to “map” other people’s behaviour, and the more “liberated” context of movie-watching, when “we find ourselves situated at a safe distance from what is being narrated on the screen and this magnifies our receptivity” (p196). This trajectory of development in Gallese’s thought, linking the experiences of following narratives and of watching movies with the discovery of innate processes for understanding others’ behaviour, has interesting implications for the present study. Children can be seen as “simulating” the behaviour of the characters they see on screen as they think about the stories they are watching, while at the same time they pick up aural and visual clues from others present (see Section 3.3.1). Likewise, playful appropriations and imitations of movie characters and situations enable children to explore the behaviour and feelings of others.

Wojciechowski and Gallese state that embodied simulation “mediates the capacity to share the meaning of actions, basic motor intentions, feelings, and emotions with others, thus grounding our identification with and connectedness to others” (Wojciechowski and Gallese 2011). While the embodied simulation concept has so far been applied to real-life interactions, it may also be pertinent to our understanding of movie narratives, and as such, can transform approaches to movie-watching in early childhood (see Section 5.2).

1.4.5 Embodied cognition and other disciplines

Embodied cognition has been castigated for asserting itself as the basis for a revolutionary paradigm shift (Wheeler 2014) and for “imperialistically” attempting to account for everything through sensorimotor functions (Fiedler 2009). But others have seen the potential for linking it

to other fields, as I have in building in the emotional, social and cultural dimensions of movie-viewing to my analysis. Semin and Smith argue for a closer relationship between social

psychology and situated, as well as embodied, cognition, since all three investigate the ways in which humans relate to one another in social situations (Semin and Smith 2002). Daum et al take this argument forward to include social cognition as well (Daum et al. 2009, p1196). The same argument supports my own investigation of children’s developing capacity to make sense of movies, alongside their increasing linguistic fluency, in shared viewing experiences.

Pink compares the ways in which sensory anthropology and multimodality deal with the senses, the relationships between word and image, and ethnography (Pink 2011). She draws on

phenomenology rather than on embodied cognition per se, but she mainly cites Ingold (Ingold 2008), who in turn draws on Merleau-Ponty (Merleau-Ponty 1962) and Gibson (Gibson 1986 (1979)): the work of both also underpins embodied cognition. She objects to Kress and Leeuwen’s acceptance of five human senses, attached to five sense organs (Kress and Van Leeuwen 2001, p127) as a modern western construct. She emphasizes that the senses need to be understood as interconnected, and that “working with these ideas requires researcher engagements that go beyond observation and data collection to attend to the ways in which we might reflexively draw on our own existing biographical experiences (as researchers and film viewers) in order to imagine and recognize our sensory embodied responses to other people, objects, textures and more in film and video” (p266). I have also found it a logical extension of the embodied cognition approach to include sensory reflection – about expressions, gestures and postures, for example – in the process of data analysis.

Rather than appearing to demand a radical paradigmatic shift, therefore, embodied cognition offers ways of rethinking and extending existing fields and disciplines from the perspective of integrated minds and bodies. It has enabled me to analyse the children’s emotional and physical responses to movies as part of the processes through which they make sense of what they see, hear and feel (see Section 4.1.1).

SUMMARY

In this chapter I have threaded my way through several fields and disciplines, indicating affinities and points of contact that illuminate my research question. I began by considering the extent to which movies may be said to have a language that is comparable to verbal/symbolic language, concluding that even though they don’t, their multimodal density requires the development of specific skills in order to understand them fully. My discussion of developmental psychologists’

approaches to children’s engagements with the formal features of movies led on to a more general account of movies for children and whether there are convincing, or consistent, arguments about appropriate stylistic features for young audiences. Because the ability to follow movie narratives is an important indicator of children’s prior learning, I have drawn on a range of pertinent studies of children’s engagements with other forms of narrative, drawings, imaginative play and modality judgments, and introduce the concept of diakresis as an account of how we manage to make sense of densely multimodal movie narratives.

Starting with Hammersley’s critique of childhood studies, and in particular his objections to the concept of studying children “in their own right”, I reviewed three different approaches to children’s learning and development: cultural learning, learning and play, and intersubjectivity. I problematized the concept of “learning” in the context of this study, given the challenges of understanding two-year-olds’ engagements with a highly complex cultural form. I identified

“risks and benefits” as the dominant paradigm in Anglophone research on children and movies, positioning my research outside and against it.

Introducing embodied cognition, I indicated its precursors and pointed out the significance of its reversal of the Cartesian separation of mind/body in helping me to make sense of the children’s viewing behaviour, as well as its claims for the instinctive, evolved nature of many of the

responses I observed. I went on to explain the significance of emotions as drivers of thought and action in response to embodied perceptions, their role in narrative understanding, and the importance of sound design and music as contributors to the interpretation of movies. I explained why the discovery of mirror neurons and the theory of “embodied simulation” that followed from it have been of particular interest to me in analyzing the social contexts of the children’s viewing and its likely role in their developing capacity to follow and interpret

narratives. It is thus a combination of embodied cognition and sociocultural approaches that has informed my analysis.