Brief article Perception of motion affects language processing.pdf

Brief article Perception of motion affects language processing Michael P. Kaschak*, Carol J. Madden, David J. Therriault, Richard H. Yaxley, Mark Aveyard, Adrienne A. Blanchard, Rolf A. Zwaan Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32310, USA Received 20 February 2004; accepted 2 June 2004 Abstract Recently developed accounts of language comprehension propose that sentences are understood by constructing a perceptual simulation of the events being described. These simulations involve the re-activation of patterns of brain activation that were formed during the comprehender’s interaction with the world. In two experiments we explored the specificity of the processing mechanisms required to construct simulations during language comprehension. Participants listened to (and made judgments on) sentences that described motion in a particular direction (e.g. “The car approached you”). They simultaneously viewed dynamic black-and-white stimuli that produced the perception of movement in the same direction as the action specified in the sentence (i.e. towards you) or in the opposite direction as the action specified in the sentence (i.e. away from you). Responses were faster to sentences presented concurrently with a visual stimulus depicting motion in the opposite direction as the action described in the sentence. This suggests that the processing mechanisms recruited to construct simulations during language comprehension are also used during visual perception, and that these mechanisms can be quite specific. q 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Language comprehension; Sentence comprehension motion perception; Embodied cognitionRecent theories of sentence processing suggest that sentence comprehension involves constructing a sensorimotor simulation of the described events (e.g. Glenberg Kaschak, 2002; Kaschak Glenberg, 2000; Stanfield Zwaan, 2001; Zwaan, 2004). These simulations involve the re-activation of patterns of brain act