Se immagino capisco : il ruolo dei processi simulativi e metaforici nella comprensione del testo

The purpose of this research is to explore the role of imagination in understanding the text. The imagination of which we speak is not of course referring to "fantasize" or the right to conceive of anything outside rules or rationality, but from G. Lakoff’s point of view, that is one imaginative rationality that uses imagination to understand what we can’t fully or directly understand. The idea comes from the suggestion by V. Gallese and G. Lakoff in The Brain's Concepts (2005) that the understanding of the concepts, whether concrete or abstract, requires simulation (Embodied Simulation, ES) and the active involvement of the sensorimotor system. According to the ES theory, it is assumed that the comprehension of a text derives from the ability to imagine (simulate) what is mentioned in the text, from the nature of words or phrases of sensory-motor origin, activating perceptual-motor programs connected to the words stimulus and mapped based on experience with things and actions which the text refers to. The idea is that, unlike the cognitivist conceptions that lead back to the understanding of a text-making processes of arbitrary symbols, the dynamic perceptual-motor of the text, induced by words or groups of words that lead to actions and perceptions, activate a configuration (modelling) that "reflects" the structure of the text (and hence its understanding) in relation to the degree of "structural similarity" that would be created between modeling textual and internal modeling (representation). The methodological approach used to investigate the nature of embodied understanding is inspired by one of the most innovative research and authoritative addresses: the Neurophenomenology, a term coined by F. Varela to combine the results and theories derived from the research in cognitive neuroscience (in particular those relating to the role of mirror neurons in understanding a sentence) with the first-person accounts of people struggling with the understanding of a text. In order to support the research hypothesis a tool called CAT (Test Text Categorization) was built, made on the basis of the results of recent research in neurophysiology, neurolinguistic and neurophenomenological orientation, in order to bring out the first-person accounts , that is the conscious "structures of thought", relating to experiences and images recalled by the subject while he includes a text. The degree of "structural similarity" was inferred through the choice made by the subject on several levels: a) the choice of words sensory-motor connected to the purpose of the text; b) the choice of metaphorical image connected to the text (among the six available ones); c) the recruited personal experience. The results support the hypothesis that the understanding of a text involves a "similarity of structures of relationship" between the generated configuration at the imaginative concept expressed by the words in the text and the configuration or structure of the text. It follows that, if the search direction shown here has a good chance of being consistent with the results of the neuoscientifical research, and then with the idea that the understanding of a text is triggered at the motor level (embodied understanding), such a turn of paradigm can not be neglected by the Education and Cognitive Sciences should be encouraged to reflect on how teaching and learning are better suited to the new conception of the relationship between perception, action and cognition.