Caroline Cance: Human sensory experience of digital technology: toward new conceptualizations of perception and instrumentality?

ABSTRACT: 

The development of new technologies, as with any tool and instrument transforms the relationships between people and their environment. I will present here how these interactions between users and devices involving new digital technologies can be productively described and studied within a situated cognition framework, focusing especially on the domains of cognitive linguistics and psychology. Building on linguistics, it is possible to analyze people's verbal descriptions as an access to their sensory experience in order to infer the psychological structures of the mind. Two examples will be given as illustrations:

  • evaluation of 2D vs 3D (CAVE) visual devices (PhD work);
  • evaluation of new musical interfaces (postdoc LAM)

showing eventually a paradigm shift in human sensory experience and conceptualization.

Finally I will present how this theoretical and methodological framework can be useful to develop cognitive sensor systems (INCAS3 current work).

 

ABOUT CAROLINE CANCE:

Caroline Cance is a postdoctoral researcher in Cognitive Linguistics and Psychology. She is currently working in the Netherlands in a new research institute called INCAS³  (INnovative Centre for Advanced Sensor and Sensor Systems, Assen, The Netherlands): www.incas3.eu. She did her PhD in Linguistics (Univ. Paris III) on the relationships between sensory experiences, linguistics resources, discourse processes, and conceptualizations of colours in French. Since then, her research has been especially concerned with the relationships between language, perception and cognition in various sensory domains (visual, sonic, … multisensorial). The main goal is to identify and analyze the role of lexical, morphosyntactical and discursive resources involved in discourse to build meaning, interpretation and conceptualizations of visual, acoustic and multisensory experiences (professional practices as well as everyday life experiences), in different languages and cultures. For further information see http://ccance.free.fr/FR/