The neural, evolutionary, developmental, and bodily basis of metaphor

The effectiveness of music-movement integration for vulnerable groups: a systematic literature review

This systematic review synthesized the outcomes of previous intervention studies published from January 2000-October 2022 to evaluate the effectiveness of Dalcroze-based or similar music-movement integration among groups of individuals considered vulnerable (in relation to their abilities and health/wellbeing). The target groups addressed in previous intervention studies included individuals with special educational needs (such as disorders, disabilities, or impairments) or with a (risk of) decline in health and/or physical strength. Twenty articles met the review inclusion criteria. All studies showed beneficial outcomes for music-movement intervention except one that suffered from low adherence rates. In older adults, the benefits were cognitive, physical, social, and/or emotional, including improved postural stability, balance, gait safety, confidence in mobility, metamemory skills, dual-task performance, social and physical pleasure, autotelic/flow experience, enjoyment, health, and quality of life. In individuals with special educational needs, improvement was seen in relation to inclusion, reductions in compulsive and other problematic behaviors, self-regulation, perceptual and cognitive abilities and functions, linguistic and learning skills, auditory attention and phonological awareness, social interaction, engagement, and agency.

Altering One's Body-Perception Through E-Textiles and Haptic Metaphors

Technologies change rapidly our perception of reality, moving from augmented to virtual to magical. While e-textiles are a key component in exergame or space suits, the transformative potential of the internal side of garments to create embodied experiences still remains largely unexplored. This paper is the result from an art-science collaborative project that combines recent neuroscience findings, body-centered design principles and 2D vibrotactile array-based fabrics to alter one's body perception. We describe an iterative design process intertwined with two user studies on the effects on body-perceptions and emotional responses of various vibration patterns within textile that were designed as spatial haptic metaphors. Our results show potential in considering materials (e.g., rocks) as sensations to design for body perceptions (e.g., being heavy, strong) and emotional responses. We discuss these results in terms of sensory effects on body perception and synergetic impact to research on embodiment in virtual environments, human-computer interaction, and e-textile design. The work brings a new perspective to the sensorial design of embodied experiences which is based on “material perception” and haptic metaphors, and highlights potential opportunities opened by haptic clothing to change body-perception.

Silent shapes and shapeless sounds: the robustness of the diminished crossmodal correspondences effect in autism spectrum conditions

We performed a registered replication of the Oberman and Ramachandran (Soc Neurosci 3(3–4):348–355, 2008) study on the ‘kiki/bouba’ effect in autism spectrum conditions (ASC). The aim of the study was to test the robustness of the diminished crossmodal correspondences effect in autism, but also to verify whether this effect is not an artifact of differences in intelligence. We tested a Polish-speaking sample of 21 participants with ADOS-confirmed autism spectrum conditions (mean age 15.90) and 21 age- (mean age 15.86), sex- and IQ-matched neurotypical control participants. Procedure closely followed the replicated study. Participants’ task was to match five pairs of unfamiliar words and shapes. Matching words and shapes had similar supramodal characteristics that allowed the match. We report partial replication of the diminished ‘kiki/bouba’ effect in individuals with ASC compared to the neurotypical control group. However, we found that nonverbal intelligence also significantly contributed to task performance, but only in participants with autism, suggesting a compensatory role of intelligence. Finally, the effect of autism severity (measured by ADOS classification) was significant—crossmodal correspondences were weaker in individuals with autism, compared to those with autism spectrum diagnosis.

Cognitive representations (Metaphorical Conceptualizations) of past, future, joy, sadness and happiness in depressive and non-depressive subjects: cognitive distortions in depression at the level of notion

The aim of this study was to see if and how the intensity of depression correlates with the cognitive representation of notions, and if any influence is reversed during remission. The cognitive representation indices used were the valence and number of metaphors produced for a notion. Three adult groups took part: persons with depression ([Formula: see text]), persons in remission ([Formula: see text]), and a control group ([Formula: see text]). Five notions were considered: PAST, FUTURE, JOY, SADNESS, and HAPPINESS. The Questionnaire of the Metaphorical Conceptualization of a Notion was used. The results showed that (a) depressive subjects did not have problems with metaphorical processing, (b) depressive subjects demonstrated strong interpretational negativism, (c) subjects during remission did not present distorted conceptual processing. The results are discussed in the context of theories of automatic metaphor processing, and conceptions of cognitive depressive distortions, in tasks requiring effort and substantial involvement of cognitive resources.

Are we all born synaesthetic? Examining the neonatal synaesthesia hypothesis

The popular claim that humans are born in a state of 'buzzing confusion' (James, 1890) can be explained either in terms of a lack of connection between sensory outputs which remain isolated, or, on the contrary, as a lack of sensory specificity leading to indistinct perceptual experiences. If both hypotheses seem to make sense of the evidence collected in early infancy, cases of synaesthesia and of arbitrary-looking crossmodal associations observed later in adults have increasingly been taken to support the latter view, known as the 'neonatal synaesthesia' hypothesis (e.g., Maurer, 1993; Maurer et al., 2012; see also Cohen Kadosh et al., 2009a,b; Ludwig et al., 2011). In this paper, we argue that there is neither a good reason to treat the most arbitrary cases of crossmodal associations, such as the correspondence between pitch and visual brightness, as providing evidence for the existence of an initial synaesthetic stage, nor to relate them developmentally to the synaesthesia that has been documented in adults. We stress that the idea that such crossmodal associations prevail at the earliest stages of human development and progressively, but not totally, disappear through exposure and learning remains a speculative or hard-to-pin down thesis, one that rests on a series of individually weak pieces of evidence. The developmental patterns of these correspondences are better explained by their being learned, and the main question they raise concerns the specificity of the learning mechanism(s) that underlies their acquisition. In conclusion, the arbitrariness of a sub-set of crossmodal associations observed in infants and/or adults is certainly only apparent or superficial, which means that it does not provide a sufficient reason to posit an innate synaesthetic confusion, and is instead compatible with most recent models of multisensory development.