Situated conceptualization: a framework for multimodal interaction (keynote)

One way of construing brain organization is as a collection of neural systems that processes the components of a situation in parallel, including its setting, agents, objects, self-relevance, internal states, actions, outcomes, etc. In a given situation, each situational component is conceptualized individually, as when components of eating in a kitchen are conceptualized as kitchen (setting), diner (agent), food (food), hunger (internal state), and chewing (action). In turn, global concepts integrate these individual conceptualizations into larger structures that conceptualize the situation as a whole, such as eating and meal. From this perspective, a situated conceptualization is a distributed record of conceptual processing in a given situation, across all the relevant component systems each distributed throughout the brain. On later occasions, when cued by something in the external or internal environment, a situated conceptualization becomes active to simulate the respective situation in its absence, producing multimodal pattern-completion inferences that guide situated action (e.g., activating a situated conceptualization to simulate and control eating). From this perspective, the concept that represents a category, such as kitchen or eating, is the collection of situated conceptualizations that has accumulated from processing the category across situations, similar to exemplar theories. The utility of situated conceptualization as a general theoretical construct is illustrated for situated action, social priming, social mirroring, emotion, and appetitive behaviors, as well as for habits and individual differences.