Multimodality has most recently been described no longer as a research field or discipline on its own, but rather as a “stage of development within a field” (Bateman 2022a, 49). The realization that (1) many different fields and disciplines now enter their own multimodal phase with new interest in multimodal phenomena and that (2) these disciplines all commit to the development of multimodality research with their own theoretical principles and methodological tools, brings with it not only an immense breadth of potential analytical objects, but also many new meta-methodological issues. “We need to find ways of ‘combining’ insights from the variously imported theoretical and methodological backgrounds brought along by previous non-multimodal stages of any contributing disciplines” (Bateman 2022a, 49). At the same time, the search for a meta-methodology for multimodal analyses is pushed further by the recent trend towards more empirical approaches to multimodal phenomena and the development and use of larger multimodal corpora that just as well require theoretical and methodological refinements. “We need to develop ways of strengthening claims with robustly applicable methods which nevertheless remain firmly anchored theoretically” (Bateman 2022b, 64). For a productive handling of these issues, disciplinary triangulation and finding a ‘common language’ or metalanguage (Maton & Chen 2016) for an ‘integrationist interdisciplinarity’ (van Leeuwen 2005) are the greatest challenges in contemporary multimodality research (Bateman 2022a). Also, there is a need for reconceptualizing the practice of analysis by making available large-scale corpora and broader and more complex empirical setups to fully process the ‘move from theory to data,’ and to substantiate long-lasting theoretical and methodological hypotheses (Pflaeging et al. 2021). For this project, we see these challenges productively as “a multimodal task from the ground up,” as John Bateman (2022b, 64) has phrased it in one of his most recent papers. This Research Topic will address this task by convening the most recent theoretical, methodological, practical, and empirical developments within contemporary multimodality research. The aim is to gain new insights in • the metalanguages or external languages that are currently being developed for multimodal analysis in many different research fields and disciplines, e.g., in pedagogy, literary theory, cultural studies, design, argumentation theory, computer science, and (experimental) psychology; • newest results from data collection methods and multimodal corpus analyses that expand the current quantitative work by, e.g., applying existing theories and methods to larger datasets, or exploring the newest communication technologies. We are particularly interested in seeing how works addressing these aspects contribute to finding ways of productive triangulation and integration for and within a meta-methodology for multimodality research. This Research Topic aims to bring together scholars from a variety of disciplines interested in multimodality research to review, explore, and advance the contributions that John Bateman, as one of the key figures in multimodality research, has made to both theory- and method-building as well as to the driving forward of multimodal empirical and corpus analyses. We welcome contributions that, for example, • critically address the theoretical and methodological advancements that John Bateman has made with regard to the notions of semiotic mode, discourse semantics, genre, textuality, etc.; • apply one of the many approaches that John Bateman has developed for the empirical analysis of multimodal artefacts (e.g., the GeM model for page-based documents, his work on multimodal film and audio-visual analysis, and the discourse semantics and/or annotation approach to visual narratives) to larger corpora or currently newly developing communicative situations; • expand on one of the abovementioned aspects with new ideas and insights from disciplines that have not yet been included in multimodality research.

"The representation of events is a central topic for cognitive science. In this series of lectures, Jeffrey M. Zacks situates event representations and their role in language within a theory of perception and memory. Event representations have a distinctive structure and format that result from computational and neural mechanisms operating during perception and language comprehension. A crucial aspect of the mechanisms is that event representations are updated to optimize their predictive utility. This updating has consequences for action control and for long-term memory. Event cognition changes across the adult lifespan and can be impaired by conditions including Alzheimer's disease. These mechanisms have broad impact on everyday activity, and have shaped the development of media such as cinema and narrative fiction"--

In her Beijing lectures, Melissa Bowerman presents a lucid introduction and account of her research on a range of topics: how children acquire the semantics of spatial terms, how they construct categories and acquire the semantics of nouns, and how they master the semantics of verbs in early language acquisition. Bowerman also covers the learning of argument structure and expressions of end-state, with special attention to the adult speech that guides children, and hence also the role of typology in acquisition; how cross-linguistic variation affects, for example, how speakers represent ‘cutting’ and ‘breaking’ in different languages, and the relation of the Whorfian Hypothesis to cross-linguistic variations in the semantics of languages. Bowerman’s over-riding concern throughout is with how children come to master the first language being spoken to them by their parents and caregivers.

This book is designed to introduce doctoral and graduate students to the process of conducting scientific research in the social sciences, business, education, public health, and related disciplines. It is a one-stop, comprehensive, and compact source for foundational concepts in behavioral research, and can serve as a stand-alone text or as a supplement to research readings in any doctoral seminar or research methods class. This book is currently used as a research text at universities on six continents and will shortly be available in nine different languages.

Much of our behavior is guided by our understanding of events. We perceive events when we observe the world unfolding around us, participate in events when we act on the world, simulate events that we hear or read about, and use our knowledge of events to solve problems. In this book, Gabriel A. Radvansky and Jeffrey M. Zacks provide the first integrated framework for event cognition and attempt to synthesize the available psychological and neuroscience data surrounding it. This synthesis leads to new proposals about several traditional areas in psychology and neuroscience including perception, attention, language understanding, memory, and problem solving. Radvansky and Zacks have written this book with a diverse readership in mind. It is intended for a range of researchers working within cognitive science including psychology, neuroscience, computer science, philosophy, anthropology, and education. Readers curious about events more generally such as those working in literature, film theory, and history will also find it of interest.

In recent years consciousness has become a significant area of study in the cognitive sciences. The 'Frontiers of Consciousness' is a major interdisciplinary exploration of consciousness. The book stems from the Chichele lectures held at All Souls College in Oxford, and features contributions from a 'who's who' of authorities from both philosophy and psychology. The result is a truly interdisciplinary volume, which tackles some of the biggest and most impenetrable problems in consciousness. The book includes chapters considering the apparent explanatory gap between science and consciousness, our conscious experience of emotions such as fear, and of willed actions by ourselves and others. It looks at subjective differences between two ways in which visual information guides behaviour, and scientific investigation of consciousness in non-human animals. It looks at the challenges that the mind-brain relation presents for clinical practice as well as for theories of consciousness. The book draws on leading research from philosophy, experimental psychology, functional imaging of the brain, neuropsychology, neuroscience, and clinical neurology. Distinctive in its accessibility, authority, and its depth of coverage, 'Frontiers of Consciousness' will be a groundbreaking and influential addition to the consciousness literature.

The 'language and space' area is a relatively new research area in cognitive science. Studying how language and spatial representation are linked in the human brain mainly draws on research in existing disciplines focusing on language, perception, categorization and development. Representative researchers from these sub-disciplines of cognitive science discuss new insights in their own field of expertise and show what role their definition of 'function', 'feature'or 'functional feature' plays in their research. New research centered around these concepts is on the forefront of developments in these sub-disciplines and in the area of 'Language and Space'.