Grounded Abstraction: Expansion of the Cognitive Repertoire through the Refinement of Relational-Intuitive-Grounded Abstraction by Means of the Arts as a Privileged Pathway

This conjecture explores the possibility that the refinement of relational-intuitive-grounded abstraction — characterized by the detection of structural relations, gradual non-deliberate adjustment, and anchoring in real multimodal simulations — may occur through the arts — music, visual arts, dance, and literary reading — as a privileged pathway of refinement, with potential to expand the human cognitive repertoire. Each art exhibits distinct features that may converge in the proposed triad: temporal-emotional in music, visuo-spatial in visual arts, embodied-dynamic in dance, and social-conceptual in literary reading. It is considered that such convergence may enable synergistic integration, with a potential multiplier effect on executive functions, relational insight, intuitive creativity, and planning in ambiguity. An observed distinction relative to current language models resides in the grounded component, with systematic divergences identified in sensory, motor, and interoceptive domains (Xu et al., 2025). Possible implications include applications in education, cognitive therapy, and aging, while testable hypotheses involve comparisons between artistic and non-artistic interventions, using behavioral and neuroscientific measures. The conjecture presents inherent limitations, relying on indirect convergences in the literature, without direct evidence of causality, and remains open to empirical investigation and future theoretical refinement.