Give Me Five? Examining the Psychophysiological Effects of High-Fives in Athletes.

High-fives are a phenomenon that is frequently observed in sports. However, investigations on effects of high-fives are missing. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to examine psychophysiological effects of high-fives.

Interrelations Between Temporal and Spatial Cognition: The Role of Modality-Specific Processing.

Temporal and spatial representations are not independent of each other. Two conflicting theories provide alternative hypotheses concerning the specific interrelations between temporal and spatial representations. The asymmetry hypothesis (based on the conceptual metaphor theory, Lakoff and Johnson, 1980) predicts that temporal and spatial representations are interrelated such that spatial representations have a stronger impact on temporal representations than vice versa.

Walking Back to the Future.

Embodied cognition frameworks suggest a direct link between sensorimotor experience and cognitive representations of concepts ( Shapiro, 2011 ). We examined whether this holds also true for concepts that cannot be directly perceived with the sensorimotor system (i.e.

Does movement influence representations of time and space?

Embodied cognition posits that abstract conceptual knowledge such as mental representations of time and space are at least partially grounded in sensorimotor experiences. If true, then the execution of whole-body movements should result in modulations of temporal and spatial reference frames. To scrutinize this hypothesis, in two experiments participants either walked forward, backward or stood on a treadmill and responded either to an ambiguous temporal question (Experiment 1) or an ambiguous spatial question (Experiment 2) at the end of the walking manipulation.

A Lifespan Perspective on Embodied Cognition.

Since its infancy embodied cognition research has fundamentally changed our understanding of how action, perception, and cognition relate to and interact with each other. Ideas from different schools of thought have led to controversial theories and a unifying framework is still being debated. In this perspective paper, we argue that in order to improve our understanding of embodied cognition and to take significant steps toward a comprehensive framework, a lifespan approach is mandatory.