Multimodal Simulations Implement Situated Conceptualizations

Multimodal Simulations Implement Situated Conceptualizations
Following Barsalou (2003), we assume that an integrated simulation
becomes active across modalities to implement a situated conceptualization.
Consider a situated conceptualization of anger for interacting with an angry
child. One thing that this conceptualization must simulate is how the child
might appear perceptually. When children are angry, their faces and bodies
take particular forms, they execute certain actions, and they make
distinctive sounds. All these perceptual aspects can be represented as modal
simulations in knowledge about the situation. Rather than amodal
descriptions representing these perceptions, simulations of them do.
A situated conceptualization about an angry child is also likely to
represent actions that the agent could take in handling the situation, such as
consoling and restraining. Modal simulations, too, can represent these
actions. Knowledge of what an agent can do is represented by simulations of
the actions themselves rather than as amodal redescriptions of them.
A situated conceptualization about an angry child is also likely to include
introspective states of both the child and the parent. Because the parent
knows what anger feels like, she can run simulations of her own anger to
project what the child is feeling. The situated conceptualization for this
situation might further include simulations of what the parent might be
feeling, such as compassion, frustration, or annoyance. Again, modal
simulations of these states represent knowledge of them in the situated
conceptualization.
Finally, this situated conceptualization for anger in a child specifies a
setting where the event is taking place—the event is not simulated in a
vacuum. Thus the event might be simulated in a bedroom, classroom, toy
store, etc. Again such knowledge is represented as simulations, this time as
reenactments of particular settings.
According to Barsalou (2003), a situated conceptualization typically con-
tains simulations of the four basic components just described: (1) people and
objects, (2) agentive actions and other bodily states (embodiment!), (3)
Social Embodiment 71introspective states, such as emotions and cognitive operations, and
(4) settings. Putting it all together, a situated conceptualization is
essentially amultimodal simulation of amulticomponent situation, with each
modality-specific component being simulated in the respective brain area.
Furthermore, such simulations place the agent directly in them, creating
the experience of ‘‘being there’’ (Barsalou, 2002, 2003). Because these
simulations reenact agentive actions and introspective states, they create the
experience of the conceptualizer being in the situation—the situation is not
represented as something detached from the conceptualizer.
Finally, a given situated conceptualization typically consists of simula-
tions from many different simulators. For example, a situated conceptual-
ization for handling an angry child is likely to include simulations from
simulators for people, objects, actions, introspections, and settings. Rather
than a single simulator producing a situated conceptualization, many
simulators contribute to the broad spectrum of components that a situated
conceptualization contains