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In another experiment, Casasanto’s team asked right-handed study participants to wear a bulky
glove that nudged them to use their left hand while doing a motor task. The constraint changed
their preferences: After completing a motor task with their left hand, people preferred choices
presented on their left.
Studies that demonstrate embodied cognition seem to defy conventional wisdom, which paints
thought as a set of computer-like algorithms that unfold entirely within the skull. That
characterization is a mistake, Golonka argues.

She and Leeds colleague Andrew Wilson advocate an ecosystem-like approach that treats
even the most sophisticated cognitive tasks as a product of how our brains and bodies have
evolved with our environments. The astonishing implication is that our bodies, through
perception and action, can actually replace the need for complex mental calculations.

Consider a cricket fielder who must run to catch a flying bal. How does he get to the right place
at the right moment? You could solve this problem with a calculator, using math and physics to
calculate where and when the ball would reach the height necessary for catching, and then
draw a straight line from the player’s starting position to that spot. But the player doesn’t do the
math, and he doesn’t run in a straight line, Golonka says.

Instead, he keeps his eye on the ball and moves in a path that syncs with the ball’s curved,
decelerating trajectory. As he runs, his motion cancels out some of the ball’s motion and now it
looks, to him, as if the ball is moving in a straight line, which he can track to its endpoint.
The fielder doesn’t need to get out a calculator. He just needs to process the visual cues he’s

getting, along with physical cues like his running speed, and then put them together to solve the
task. Yes, he uses his brain; but his eyes and legs are just as crucial.
Clear evidence of embodied cognition is now voluminous. What to make of it ... well, that’s
more controversial. The view that thought depends crucially on bodily sensation and action has
yet to overtake the traditional model of cognition.. In part, that’s because researchers lack a
coherent theory that can explain how and under what circumstances embodied effects occur.

Golonka and Wilson hope their ecosystem-like model can become this unifying framework. If
they’re right that thought occurs not only in the brain but in a tangled communication among
brain, body and environment, it could turn cognition research upside down. French philosopher
René Descartes once said, cogito ergo sum: I think, therefore I am.

The embodied cognition model suggests a slightly different philosophy — I am, therefore I think.