Definition
Embodied cognition is a subdomain of cognitive psychology that focuses on the interaction between an individual and the environment (social, environmental, instructional). It moves beyond the traditional distinctions between mind and body in the sense that actions or interactions embody projections of the mind and vice versa.
Some Definitional Differences in Mathematics Education
Many embodied ideas eventually are represented symbolically in mathematics. Examples of these are enumeration systems which are abstractions of human gestures for counting, pointing, and measuring. Freudenthal (1973) claimed that geometry is based upon our experiences with our bodies in the world. This suggests that the only mathematics we are able to know is the mathematics that our bodies and brains allow us to know (Lakoff and Nunez 2000; Fyhn 2010). Freudenthal (1973) also claimed that geometry is about grasping space. Fyhn (2010) interprets “Space” according to this definition as that “in...
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Sriraman, B., Wu, K. (2020). Embodied Cognition. In: Lerman, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Mathematics Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15789-0_179
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