About the lecture
Communication science is primarily based on traditional disembodied theories of cognition that informs much of the field’s research endeavors. However, recent theories of embodied cognition that situate knowledge acquisition and attitude formation processes in our sensorimotor systems have challenged traditional assumptions. An embodied perspective assumes that cognition is grounded in the body. Apart from recent communication research related to immersive virtual environments (IVEs) and virtual reality (VR), an embodied perspective has not been widely adopted in communication science. This talk introduces and reviews relevant embodied cognition scholarship from various fields and discusses how embodied mental simulation can be incorporated with traditional communication models.
About Bruce Hardy
Bruce W. Hardy is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Social Influence in the Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University. His research and teaching focuses on political, scientific and health communication; knowledge acquisition, opinion formation and behavior; emergent technologies and society and advanced research methods. His research has been published in numerous academic journals including Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Science Communication, American Behavioral Scientist, Computers in Human Behavior, Public Opinion Quarterly, Journal of Communication, Communication Theory and Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. Hardy’s research has won national and international scholarly awards from the American Publishers Association, the International Communication Association and the National Communication Association. He is also a Distinguished Research Fellow with the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center.