Publication

Embodied niche construction in the hominin lineage: semiotic structure and sustained attention in human embodied cognition

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Last modified
  • 02/20/2025
Type of Material
Authors
    Aaron Stutz, Emory University
Language
  • English
Date
  • 2014-08
Publisher
  • Frontiers
Publication Version
Copyright Statement
  • Copyright © 2014 Stutz.
License
Final Published Version (URL)
Title of Journal or Parent Work
ISSN
  • 1664-1078
Volume
  • 5
Issue
  • 834
Start Page
  • 1
End Page
  • 19
Abstract
  • Human evolution unfolded through a rather distinctive, dynamically constructed ecological niche. The human niche is not only generally terrestrial in habitat, while being flexibly and extensively heterotrophic in food-web connections. It is also defined by semiotically structured and structuring embodied cognitive interfaces, connecting the individual organism with the wider environment. The embodied dimensions of niche-population co-evolution have long involved semiotic system construction, which I hypothesize to be an evolutionarily primitive aspect of learning and higher-level cognitive integration and attention in the great apes and humans alike. A clearly pre-linguistic form of semiotic cognitive structuration is suggested to involve recursively learned and constructed object icons. Higher-level cognitive iconic representation of visually, auditorily, or haptically perceived extrasomatic objects would be learned and evoked through indexical connections to proprioceptive and affective somatic states. Thus, private cognitive signs would be defined, not only by their learned and perceived extrasomatic referents, but also by their associations to iconically represented somatic states. This evolutionary modification of animal associative learning is suggested to be adaptive in ecological niches occupied by long-lived, large-bodied ape species, facilitating memory construction and recall in highly varied foraging and social contexts, while sustaining selective attention during goal-directed behavioral sequences. The embodied niche construction (ENC) hypothesis of human evolution posits that in the early hominin lineage, natural selection further modified the ancestral ape semiotic adaptations, favoring the recursive structuration of concise iconic narratives of embodied interaction with the environment.
Author Notes
  • Aaron J.Stutz,Division of History and Social Sciences, OxfordCollege of EmoryUniversity, 810 Whatcoat Street, Oxford, GA3 0054, USA e-mail: astutz@emory.edu
Keywords
Research Categories
  • Education, Social Sciences
  • Anthropology, Cultural
  • Anthropology, Physical

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