Highly interdisciplinary, research on image schemas takes inspiration from the background in cognitive linguistics where Johnson (1987) described an image schema as “. . . a recurring, dynamic pattern of our perceptual interactions and motor programs that gives coherence and structure to our experience.” Today, the research area encompasses several disciplines interested in embodied cognition, spatiotemporal reasoning and abstract thinking.
Often thought of as cognitive patterns describing spatial relations and movements, image schemas are studied in psychology and linguistics as a format of thought, and applied in computer science and robotics as a means to represent complex concepts and model behaviour. Simultaneously, studies in visualisation, art and human-computer interaction use image schemas as a mental shortcut to capture meaning and produce incentives to action.
Being an interdisciplinary research field allows for a level of research emergence that rarely takes place in more traditionally focused disciplines. Building on that premise, the Image Schema Day (ISD) workshop series was introduced to provide a venue for people of any discipline to discuss their work. Since 2015, when the first ISD was held in Bozen-Bolzano as an invite-only experiment, the workshop series has grown in both size and disciplinary variance as each edition has consisted of a plethora of topics that all centred on that one central notion: image schemas and conceptual primitives.
The first five instances of the ISD were annually held in Bozen-Bolzano, Italy. The first two as independent invite-only events. ISD3 took part in the Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO 2017) (see https://www.iaoa.org/jowo/2017/) and editions ISD4 and ISD5 were part in the first two instances of the umbrella event TriCoLore: Creativity, Cognition and Computation (see https://tricolore.inf.unibz.it). Spreading its wings, perhaps as a response to the pandemic travel restrictions, ISD6 was held in Jönköping, Sweden, for a 2-day independent workshop. ISD7 took part in the workshop program of The 20th International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR 2023) on the beachfront adjacent to the turquoise waters of Rhodes, Greece.
Returning to Bozen-Bolzano, the ISD8 workshop took part in the workshop program of the 23rd Conference of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AI*IA 2023) (see https: //aixia2024.events.unibz.it/). As the city recently left the autumn season, it prepared for the region’s largest Christmas market. Thus, the workshop participants experienced temperatures around zero degrees while bathing in the wonderful sunlight.
As one of the larger workshops at AI*IA, two days were filled with scientific presentations, keynotes and other intellectual exchanges.
The workshop’s first keynote speaker was Prof. John Bateman from Bremen University (DE). He discussed the importance of image-schematic relationships in audiovisual communication in films. His talk “Image schemas, cognitive metaphor, and film: bridging discourses” engaged the audience by including a series of film sequences from everything from Hitchcock’s horror movies to children’s animation.
The second keynote speaker was Prof. Zoe Falomir from Umeå University (SE). In her talk “Spatial representations and image schemas for symbol grounding and reasoning” she kept the audience engaged by quizzing them on logical problem-solving by folding papers and twisting dice.
The workshop also included the tutorial “Cognitively Inspired Reasoning for Reactive Robotics - From Image Schemas to Knowledge Enrichment” hosted by Dr Mihai Hawkin1 from Bremen University (DE), Dr Stefano De Giorgis from CNR-ISTC (IT), and Dr Nikolaos Tsiogkas from KU Leuven (BE). Through engaging presentations and hands-on activities, the tutorial ofered the participants an opportunity to learn how to extract image-schematic relationships from video clips through a combination of computer vision and semantic technologies.
The final component of the workshop was a merger with the “ART AFTER AI” event, where the participants of ISD8 had the opportunity to attend the art exhibition followed by a joined panel on the topic “Crossing Educational Boundaries”, moderated by Antonella De Angeli (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano) and with the following panelists: John Bateman (University of Bremen), Federico Bomba (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano and Sineglossa), Gabriella Cortellessa (CNR - National Research Council of Italy), Monica Landoni (USI Università della Svizzera italiana), and Mateusz Miroslaw Lis (SophIA).
The papers in this volume have been peer-reviewed and they consist of the following topics: Baur et al presents work on using physical components for embodied representations of image schemas. Neugaertner takes a historic look into and analyses the graphical language of Isotype. Hedblom presents initial thoughts on how conceptual primitives from the five senses could be formally approached. Olearo et al talks about how difusion models can approach conceptual blending. Leemhuis and Kutz presents an analysis of how “betweenness” can be considered an additional image-schematic notion. Stufano Melone et al takes a look at the urban landscape and performs an ontological analysis of the notion of a ‘square’. De Giorgis and Righetti use LLM in order to expand the image-schema catalog. De Giorgis uses LLMs for knowledge enrichment for the force image schema. Nikolaienko performs an analysis of the prevalence of left and right orientations in dream journals. Diesner presents the results of a pilot study on using an embodied approach of treating Broca’s aphasia.
1Formerly Mihai Pomarlan Contributions in this volume
• John Bateman.
Image Schemas, Cognitive Metaphor, and Film: Bridging Discourses • Zoe Falomir.
Spatial Representations and Image Schemas for Symbol Grounding and Reasoning
• Mihai Hawkin, Stefano De Giorgis and Nikolaos Tsiogkas.
Cognitively Inspired Reasoning for Reactive Robotics - From Image Schemas to Knowledge Enrichment • Orfeas Chasapis Tassinis.
Justice ‘Under’ Law? Image Schemas and Spatial Reasoning in Legal Discourse • Henri-Jacques Geiss, Justus Piater and Alejandro Agostini.
Building a Curious Agent that Learns to Plan with Images Schemas • Valeriia Nikolaienko.
Left-Right Spatial Orientation in Dream Reports: Image Schemas and Interactional Dynamics • Daniela Diesner.
An Embodied Approach to Treating Aphasia: __ Missing ___ Prepositions and Bringing Them In
Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy