Mental Model of Body Includes What You Touch
The body is the mind’s interface to the world. The body mediates every input the mind gets as well as every action taken. Body and mind co-mingle not in some mystical sense but in a way cognitive neuroscience is starting to map out. If we are to optimize our designs for how minds work, we must account for the embodied nature of cognition in every single application.
One way to do this is to understand how the mind represents the body as an internal image, model or schema. The mental model or internal representation we have of our body shapes all aspects of cognitive life – perception, memory, learning, decision making, creativity, self-regulation and so on. Understanding the specifics of how this works could be a treasure drove of insights for cognitive designers.
So I am always on the lookout for scientific work on body representations. Take for example the exciting new article in Psychological Science on, Rapid Assimilation of External Objects in Body Schema. Here is what the researchers found:
Our body sense (mental model of our own bodies) is plastic and can be extended to quickly integrate any object we are touching.
The finding is robust but is limited to objects we are in direct contact with versus those the touched object may be in contact with and extending further into the environment. This gives the tools we use and objects we hold special cognitive status. They are in fact part of us.
