Visual thinking and spatial cognition with Barbara Tversky
In this episode, we have the privilege of being joined by Barbara Tversky, a renowned psychologist and Emerita Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. Together, we embark on a captivating exploration of spatial cognition and the profound impact it has on shaping our perception of reality. Barbara's groundbreaking book, “Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought,” presents a revolutionary theory that challenges conventional wisdom by asserting that movement, not language, forms the basis of human cognition.
Barbara delves into the intricate relationship between our physical surroundings, the actions we undertake, and the way we think, create, and communicate. She unveils the concept of our current reality as an augmented one, shedding light on abstract thinking without reliance on words.
Moreover, she reveals how the spatial foundation of thought manifests itself in various forms, such as gestures, diagrams, and language, carrying profound implications for design, creativity, and collaboration.
Join us on this enlightening journey as we unravel the intricate process of reality construction: absorbing the world, encoding it through language, and subsequently translating conceptual relationships back into our built reality through the creation of maps, lines, and shared concepts.
Don't miss out on this perceptive episode! Deepen your understanding of spatial cognition, learn how to leverage spatial reasoning to navigate the world, and enhance your capacity for effective reasoning.
Get Barbara’s book HERE
About Barbara Tversky:
Barbara joined the faculty at Stanford University in 1978, and she is currently an active Emerita Professor of Psychology. She is also a Professor of Psychology at Columbia Teachers College and the author of the 2019 book Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought. Her work focuses on the relationship between the spaces we inhabit and the actions we perform and how we think, create, and communicate.
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Topics:
Welcome Barbara Tversky to The Rhys Show!: (00:00:00)
What is Spatial Cognition?: (00:01:51)
Intersection between abstract thought and spatial world: (00:05:24)
Does the X on graphs represent time?: (00:12:15)
How did language evolve with spatial cognition?: (00:15:03)
About Barbara’s statement “Put our world in our mind and our mind in the world”: (00:19:30)
Thoughts about moving around in a manufactured spatial reality : (00:31:04)
How to get better at spatial reasoning and cognition? : (00:36:09)
About laws of cognition and reflecting on “Feeling Comes first” : (00:41:20)
Overrated and underrated questions: (00:48:27)
Categorization versus dimension: (00:51:16)
Mentioned resources:
Thinking with Your Hands book by Susan Goldin-Meadow
Connect with Barbara Tversky:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/btversky?lang=en (sin usar)
Stanford University: https://profiles.stanford.edu/barbara-tversky
Columbia University: https://datascience.columbia.edu/
Connect with Rhys:
