Prof. Fritz Strack (Würzburg, Germany)

Embodiment – Features and Functions
The concept of embodiment suggests that mental processes crucially involve the simulation of experiences that play a role in actually encountering an object. These experiences are often based on feedback from peripheral motor activities. This implies that inducing, facilitating or inhibiting concomitant motor actions will modifiy the experiences and the judgments that are based on them. In my presentation, I shall describe different routes on which physical behavior may influence psychological representations. I shall illustrate these proposals with examples from my own work ranging from influences of facial and postural action to head movements and chewing activities on affective judgments, memory and aesthetic assessments. Special emphasis will be given to the bodily representation of fluency that provides the basis of a large number of intuitive judgments. In this context, it will be shown that mental processes require different peripheral motor representations whose interruption shall attenuate the feeling and modify the judgment.

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06.07.2009/cb