Embodied cognition is sometimes presented as an alternative
to computational approaches, the argument being that
cognition is strongly influenced by an agent's body movement.
However, the exact nature of this influence is still uncertain. In
the current paper, we add to the conversation by analyzing
adults’ predictions in a high-ambiguity task: Adults had to
decide which of two objects would sink faster (or slower) in
water. Ambiguity was achieved by pitting object volume and
object mass against buoyancy: The winning object of a pair was
sometimes the bigger and heavier one, and sometimes it was
the smaller and lighter one. The crucial manipulation was
whether the stimuli were real-life objects or 2D pictures. All
participants were presented with pictures of the objects during
a training phase (when they received feedback on their
predictions). Real-life objects were either present during the
phase prior to the training (jars-first condition), or during the
phase after the training (jars-last condition). Findings showed
a clear influence of hands-on experiences: When allowed to
hold the objects, adults were more likely to demonstrate a
simplistic focus on object heaviness. These results call for a
more nuanced understanding of the effect of embodied
experiences on the stability of representations. While
embodiment sometimes can help distinguish relevant from
irrelevant information, we show that it can also destabilize
representations acquired through visual information.