Thoughts in space: the impact of environmental surround on cognitive processing

The embodied cognition perspective has provided a formalization of the idea that the motor state is a characteristic of being that permeates all of human processing. We review this perspective and experimental evidence supporting its claim. It is further considered that the motor behaving human moves within various spaces, each affording different actions. To this end, it is proposed that the environmental surround is a critical variable in the embodied cognition perspective. Thoughts, inasmuch as they may be grounded in simulation of motor-behavioural responses, require time but also space. We suggest that these time-space considerations occur within a proposed concept of the potentiated state.