5 ms·

On Proprioception, the Sixth Sense of Storytelling (2022)

111 points by wawayanda 3y ago

retrac 3y ago
I have a conjecture, that we understand language primarily through proprioception. So when we see and hear someone talking, we mirror and model their muscle movements, and we understand it fundamentally, in terms of our own body moving. I suspect proprioception plays a role in abstract thinking, too. Conceptual metaphors are movement based, as if our hands were manipulating thoughts. We pick ideas apart, reassemble them, sort through them, toss them out.
- ghusbands 3y ago
  Blind people understand language perfectly well, which rules out your conjecture. [ETA: Yes, this is a response to "see and hear", which should perhaps be "see or hear", and because "we mirror and model their muscle movements" implies more than just vocals/sound.]
  - syntaxfree 3y ago
    You’re able to capture a whole world of proximity relations through echolocation.
    - 4gotunameagain 3y ago
      I assume you mean by auditory information. Echolocation pertains specifically to the use of echoes to determine location, which would not help at all in this case, with the granularity required. Even assuming that auditory information it is, I am unsure if it enables mimicry as much as visual information, which apart from being our predominant sense, it gives clear clue as to which movement led to which action/sound
  - mathgradthrow 3y ago
    proprioception is separate from vision.
  - retrac 3y ago
    I must have expressed it poorly, because my conjecture seems to apply equally to blind people. Looking back, maybe it's because I wrote "see and hear"? Just an artifact of my perspective as a hard-of-hearing person who relies heavily on lipreading. I suspect when blind people hear speech, or read with braille, they mirror the muscle movements involved, as if they were speaking the words themselves. Sight isn't required for that. Neither is hearing. The deaf-blind can learn sign language through feeling the motion of the signs. I suspect it all works the same way, hearing language, seeing language, feeling language acted out physically - the audience understands it by acting out the same motions themselves, internally.
- metanonsense 3y ago
  You should read „A thousand brains“ by Jeff Hawkins (if you haven’t already done so). A large part of their theory is that the brain has evolved to orient and move in a 3D world and that this is the basis of our abstract thinking.
  - agumonkey 3y ago
    Super interesting, I often thought this too, i know which book will be next on my list.
  - adzm 3y ago
    Highly recommend this book. It's a brilliant approach to understanding our consciousness.
- agumonkey 3y ago
  Personal anecdote, there's a lot of your nervous system that is indeed simulating other personas in your head. And the closer you get the deeper the mirroring (children, spouse). After some catastrophic events, whenever I was smiling, the shape was altered, and took how my ex was smiling (very different facial structure) and triggered hallucinations of her face onto mine and other various emotions. It happens whenever (at various intensities) I mirror her smile.
- Tarq0n 3y ago
  Different people have different kinds of cognition. For instance this Joseph Conrad quote from the article: “My job as a writer of fiction is to make you see, to appeal as accurately as possible to the visible, and that is everything.” is amusingly wrong to the many aphantastic people on Hacker News.
  - Teever 3y ago
    But do you think that means that aphanastic people are less likely to enjoy the books written by this author?
- piombisallow 3y ago
  Sounds like a dumb conjecture, how do you explain reading and talking on the phone then?
  - retrac 3y ago
    > reading We learn to read aloud, and there's usually a long transitional period of subvocalization. And even people who can read silently, if they want to very carefully understand something, often subvocalize it - even moving the lips silently. My conjecture is this process never goes away entirely. > talking on the phone Same mechanism. We hear the sounds and imagine ourselves making the muscle motions to produce such sounds.
  - MiddleMan5 3y ago
    This comment is disrespectful and dismissive and goes against the community guidelines. Please refrain from personal attacks on other community members
- cyrillite 3y ago
  Well, there is often a good correlation between things which make socialising difficult and things which appear to make aspects of spatial reasoning difficult.
omershapira 3y ago
Every "Perception for VR" class I give focuses on understanding proprioception. Designers ignore it until they experience spatial planning just with proprioception: • Start by closing your eyes and touching your nose. Why can you do that? • Continue by trying to touch two fingers on opposite hands behind your head. Why can't you do that? (because your proprioceptors are saturated). • Now, you can build an environment with post-it notes and a blindfold: https://omershapira.com/blog/2016/04/the-painful-introduction-to-virtual-reality-versions-2016/ https://omershapira.com/blog/2016/04/the-painful-introductio...
- jackhalford 3y ago
  I just touched two fingers behind my head with eyes closed (although does that really matter, hands being out of sight?). So I still don’t get the point about proprioception
  - chrisweekly 3y ago
    same
  - atomicnumber3 3y ago
    I tested this out too. I noticed a few things where GPs explanation is probably abbreviated: I noticed that finger-to-nose, I was able to do the first time, every time. 100% accuracy, and with no "do a little circle to figure out the last 0.5in". As opposed to touch-fingers-behind-head, I could "feel" the uncertainty and successfully touching fingers the first time, while not impossible, was probably 10-20% success rate. I was able to improve it by doing a little (radius of perhaps 5mm?) circle with both fingers once I knew I was about in the right place, since I was usually within about a fingers-breadth. But the whole process was just a lot less bulletproof than finger-to-nose. Which I think was GPs point.
    - johnchristopher 3y ago
      N=2, nose is a hit 100% of the time with pinpoint accuracy but fingers behind the head only hit if I repeat the movement. Going much slower increase accuracy but it's never as good as hitting the nose anyway. At normal or increased speed I usually miss by a finger width.
fritzo 3y ago
I agree proprioception is important in fiction, but I think of senses as being more immediate outputs of our sensors: touch, pain, temperature, sight, hearing, smell, taste, balance, etc. Proprioception seems like a more downstream integrated signal inferred from sight, balance, touch, and hearing.
- ghkbrew 3y ago
  Not really. You actually have a unique set of sensory neurons that tell you the spacial orientation of your body by measuring muscle/ligament stretch: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception Edit: yes your general "body sense" is intergrated over multiple senses, including sight, touch, inner ear, ... but my point is that proprioception is an independent signal in that mix.
zubairq 3y ago
Fascinating, I never knew there was be a word for this, Proprioception is the word! It is definitely a thing about the body, time, and space that I have thought about. Thank you for posting!
- travisjungroth 3y ago
  The author is using the word “proprioception” differently from its established meaning. It’s not just a general idea of where you are in the world. That includes so many other senses. It’s specifically the sense of the body’s position in relation to itself. Is your arm straight or bent? This is a proprioception question. Having the feeling of being in a shack is not proprioception. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception

111 points by wawayanda 3y ago

I have a conjecture, that we understand language primarily through proprioception. So when we see and hear someone talking, we mirror and model their muscle movements, and we understand it fundamentally, in terms of our own body moving. I suspect proprioception plays a role in abstract thinking, too. Conceptual metaphors are movement based, as if our hands were manipulating thoughts. We pick ideas apart, reassemble them, sort through them, toss them out.

ghusbands 3y ago
Blind people understand language perfectly well, which rules out your conjecture. [ETA: Yes, this is a response to "see and hear", which should perhaps be "see or hear", and because "we mirror and model their muscle movements" implies more than just vocals/sound.]
- syntaxfree 3y ago
  You’re able to capture a whole world of proximity relations through echolocation.
  - 4gotunameagain 3y ago
    I assume you mean by auditory information. Echolocation pertains specifically to the use of echoes to determine location, which would not help at all in this case, with the granularity required. Even assuming that auditory information it is, I am unsure if it enables mimicry as much as visual information, which apart from being our predominant sense, it gives clear clue as to which movement led to which action/sound
- mathgradthrow 3y ago
  proprioception is separate from vision.
- retrac 3y ago
  I must have expressed it poorly, because my conjecture seems to apply equally to blind people. Looking back, maybe it's because I wrote "see and hear"? Just an artifact of my perspective as a hard-of-hearing person who relies heavily on lipreading. I suspect when blind people hear speech, or read with braille, they mirror the muscle movements involved, as if they were speaking the words themselves. Sight isn't required for that. Neither is hearing. The deaf-blind can learn sign language through feeling the motion of the signs. I suspect it all works the same way, hearing language, seeing language, feeling language acted out physically - the audience understands it by acting out the same motions themselves, internally.
metanonsense 3y ago
You should read „A thousand brains“ by Jeff Hawkins (if you haven’t already done so). A large part of their theory is that the brain has evolved to orient and move in a 3D world and that this is the basis of our abstract thinking.
- agumonkey 3y ago
  Super interesting, I often thought this too, i know which book will be next on my list.
- adzm 3y ago
  Highly recommend this book. It's a brilliant approach to understanding our consciousness.
agumonkey 3y ago
Personal anecdote, there's a lot of your nervous system that is indeed simulating other personas in your head. And the closer you get the deeper the mirroring (children, spouse). After some catastrophic events, whenever I was smiling, the shape was altered, and took how my ex was smiling (very different facial structure) and triggered hallucinations of her face onto mine and other various emotions. It happens whenever (at various intensities) I mirror her smile.
Tarq0n 3y ago
Different people have different kinds of cognition. For instance this Joseph Conrad quote from the article: “My job as a writer of fiction is to make you see, to appeal as accurately as possible to the visible, and that is everything.” is amusingly wrong to the many aphantastic people on Hacker News.
- Teever 3y ago
  But do you think that means that aphanastic people are less likely to enjoy the books written by this author?
piombisallow 3y ago
Sounds like a dumb conjecture, how do you explain reading and talking on the phone then?
- retrac 3y ago
  > reading We learn to read aloud, and there's usually a long transitional period of subvocalization. And even people who can read silently, if they want to very carefully understand something, often subvocalize it - even moving the lips silently. My conjecture is this process never goes away entirely. > talking on the phone Same mechanism. We hear the sounds and imagine ourselves making the muscle motions to produce such sounds.
- MiddleMan5 3y ago
  This comment is disrespectful and dismissive and goes against the community guidelines. Please refrain from personal attacks on other community members
cyrillite 3y ago
Well, there is often a good correlation between things which make socialising difficult and things which appear to make aspects of spatial reasoning difficult.

omershapira 3y ago

Every "Perception for VR" class I give focuses on understanding proprioception. Designers ignore it until they experience spatial planning just with proprioception: • Start by closing your eyes and touching your nose. Why can you do that? • Continue by trying to touch two fingers on opposite hands behind your head. Why can't you do that? (because your proprioceptors are saturated). • Now, you can build an environment with post-it notes and a blindfold: https://omershapira.com/blog/2016/04/the-painful-introduction-to-virtual-reality-versions-2016/ https://omershapira.com/blog/2016/04/the-painful-introductio...

jackhalford 3y ago
I just touched two fingers behind my head with eyes closed (although does that really matter, hands being out of sight?). So I still don’t get the point about proprioception
- chrisweekly 3y ago
  same
- atomicnumber3 3y ago
  I tested this out too. I noticed a few things where GPs explanation is probably abbreviated: I noticed that finger-to-nose, I was able to do the first time, every time. 100% accuracy, and with no "do a little circle to figure out the last 0.5in". As opposed to touch-fingers-behind-head, I could "feel" the uncertainty and successfully touching fingers the first time, while not impossible, was probably 10-20% success rate. I was able to improve it by doing a little (radius of perhaps 5mm?) circle with both fingers once I knew I was about in the right place, since I was usually within about a fingers-breadth. But the whole process was just a lot less bulletproof than finger-to-nose. Which I think was GPs point.
  - johnchristopher 3y ago
    N=2, nose is a hit 100% of the time with pinpoint accuracy but fingers behind the head only hit if I repeat the movement. Going much slower increase accuracy but it's never as good as hitting the nose anyway. At normal or increased speed I usually miss by a finger width.

fritzo 3y ago

I agree proprioception is important in fiction, but I think of senses as being more immediate outputs of our sensors: touch, pain, temperature, sight, hearing, smell, taste, balance, etc. Proprioception seems like a more downstream integrated signal inferred from sight, balance, touch, and hearing.

ghkbrew 3y ago
Not really. You actually have a unique set of sensory neurons that tell you the spacial orientation of your body by measuring muscle/ligament stretch: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception Edit: yes your general "body sense" is intergrated over multiple senses, including sight, touch, inner ear, ... but my point is that proprioception is an independent signal in that mix.

zubairq 3y ago

Fascinating, I never knew there was be a word for this, Proprioception is the word! It is definitely a thing about the body, time, and space that I have thought about. Thank you for posting!

travisjungroth 3y ago
The author is using the word “proprioception” differently from its established meaning. It’s not just a general idea of where you are in the world. That includes so many other senses. It’s specifically the sense of the body’s position in relation to itself. Is your arm straight or bent? This is a proprioception question. Having the feeling of being in a shack is not proprioception. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception