This Research Topic is Volume II of
Language Embodiment: Principles, Processes, and Theories for Learning and Teaching Practices in Typical and Atypical Readers .
Traditional philosophy of language was based on a disembodied view. In contrast, recent research with behavioral and neuroimaging methodologies emphasizes language embodiment, which claims the central role of the body and brain in shaping language acquisition, learning, comprehension, and production. The embodiment view of language is supported by a body of empirical research covering interdisciplinary perspectives, including cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, educational psychology, artificial intelligence, embodied semantics, speech therapy, and physiological neuroscience.
This Research Topic aims to collect papers covering (1) cognitive and neural mechanisms (e.g., sensorimotor and language comprehension, handwriting-facilitated meaning and orthography learning, gesture-bootstrap learning, body-based linguistic constructions, to learning-by-doing, experience and action-based language instruction); (2) neural cognitive processes (that recruit conceptual-metaphor, sensory, motor and affective processes for lower-level and higher-level of linguistic construction); (3) intellectual influence/impact covering from animal, human to the intelligent system (e.g., How intelligent is artificial intelligence?) and the relationship between AI and human intelligence (HI) (e.g., Do we need a strong AI with consciousness and emotion?); and (4) the practical application of embodied linguistics in the current AI area (e.g., How can the embodiment technology boost language learning in both the normal and special populations?).
We welcome researchers in the field of behaviorism, cognitive neurophysiology, computational linguistics, neurolinguistics, bioinformatics, and related areas to contribute to this Research Topic. The themes of the paper could cover the following topics, but are not limited to these suggested areas and approaches:
- Experience and exposure for L1 & L2 language learning
- Sensorimotor skills in second language and foreign language development.
- Action and body-related teaching and learning principles.
- Meta-analyses for the role of embodiment in language learning.
- Qualitative synthesis on the role of embodiment in language learning.
- Motor and cognitive inhibition and conflict of negation and negative emotions in L1 and L2.
- The application of language and motor embodiment to neurodegenerative diseases (Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s) or the diagnosis of some developmental disorders (ADHD and OCD).
- Comparative studies on the role of embodiment between typical and atypical readers.
- Neuroimaging experiments related to the above-mentioned topics.
- Sub-direction of AI known as “affective computing”.
- Transition from the traditional linguistic knowledge generation models to bioinformatic models, for instance, the neural language model, embodied linguistic models for language learning, the neural connectivity networks, general language models, and pre-trained contextualized language models on biomedical information extraction tasks.
- The medicinal or biological insights and applications of embodied linguistic technologies and models (e.g., linguistic distributional technology, AI corpus development, sensorimotor indicators, construction of optimized computing model etc.)