Sabbatical Walter Schaeken: Deepening and integration of spatial reasoning and pragmatic language use

I will link my stay at the Università degli Studi di Torino to two of my research lines, namely spatial reasoning and pragmatic language use. First, I will develop with Prof. Bucciarelli and Dr. Ianì a series of studies to investigate whether motor simulation plays a role in spatial reasoning. Reasoning can be understood as the construction and manipulation of mental models, which are constructed on the basis of observed or described states. Situated cognition theories state that reasoning processes can be facilitated or hindered by responding to body movements. This can be done by manipulating the experimental instructions (activation of mental simulation), the content of the premises (activation of motor activation), the movements of the participants' arms (the same effectors involved in the simulation are triggered by the observation and manipulation of objects), and finally directly the motor cortex (using techniques such as rTMS). During my stay in Torino we want to
investigate the role of the sensorimotor system on spatial reasoning. This research plan fits perfectly in my C1 project “The mental models theory and relational reasoning: refinements, extensions and a developmental perspective” in which explicit attention is paid to the influence of gestures and movements in spatial reasoning. It can also be linked to my ID-N project "BITSHARE: Bitstring Semantics for Human and Artificial Reasoning", where we from the perspective of bitstring semantics also want to look at spatial terms. Second, I intend to further investigate the role of executive functions (inhibition, mental flexibility, working memory) in pragmatic language use with Prof. Bosco, a specialist in pragmatic language use. We both independently recently completed a manuscript on the relationship between executive function, pragmatic language use, and the elderly. We will build on this during my sabbatical.