Recent work from an embodied-cognition perspective suggests that symbolic understanding involves bodily actions. Indeed, laboratory evidence and cultural phenomena such as magic rituals and symbolic aggression show that the behaviors evoked by a word and its referent can be quite similar to each other. In other circumstances, however, words and…

Most children who are congenitally deafblind are severely delayed in their communication development and many will not achieve symbolic understanding and expression. This article discusses developmental markers cited in the research literature as predictive of or facilitative of the development of symbolism. These markers include the growth toward…

Computation can have a profound intellectual impact, like the alphabet thousands of years ago. Using computation, people can begin to outline cognitive structures that will revolutionize the way they learn, although, especially at universities, the dreams must sometimes lag behind their potential due to limited funding. Ultimately, however, the…