Do people spontaneously form visual mental images when understanding language, and if so, how truly visual are these representations? We test whether processing linguistic descriptions of motion produces sufficiently vivid mental images to cause direction-selective motion adaptation in the visual system (i.e., cause a motion aftereffect illusion). We tested for motion aftereffects (MAEs) following explicit motion imagery, and after processing literal or metaphorical motion language (without instructions to imagine). Intentionally imagining motion produced reliable MAEs. The aftereffect from processing motion language gained strength as people heard more and more of a story (participants heard motion stories in four installments, with a test after each). For the last two story installments, motion language produced reliable MAEs across participants. Individuals differed in how early in the story this effect appeared, and this difference was predicted by the strength of an individual's MAE from imagining motion. Strong imagers (participants who showed the largest MAEs from imagining motion) were more likely to show an MAE in the course of understanding motion language than were weak imagers. The results demonstrate that processing language can spontaneously create sufficiently vivid mental images to produce direction-selective adaptation in the visual system. The timecourse of adaptation suggests that individuals may differ in how efficiently they recruit visual mechanisms in the service of language understanding. Further, the results reveal an intriguing link between the vividness of mental imagery and the nature of the processes and representations involved in language understanding.A good story can draw you in, conjure up a rich visual world, give you goose-bumps, or even make you feel like you were really there. To what extent is hearing a story about something similar to really witnessing it? What is the nature of the representations that arise in the course of normal language processing? Do people spontaneously form visual mental images when understanding language, and if so how truly visual are these representations? In this paper, we make use of the motion aftereffect illusion to test whether processing linguistic descriptions of motion produces sufficiently vivid mental images to cause direction-selective adaptation in the visual system (i.e., cause a motion aftereffect).A number of findings suggest that people do spontaneously engage in imagery during language comprehension, and that processing language affects performance in subsequent perceptual tasks (1-9).What mechanism might underlie these interactions between linguistic processing and perception? The explanation frequently offered is that the representations generated during the course of language comprehension share processing resources with perception, recruiting some of the very same brain regions (10). As evidence for this possibility, neuroimaging [functional MRI (fMRI)] measures have revealed that classically "perceptual" brain areas are recr...

Research shows that people exhibit a conservative shift in their politics when their majority group status is threatened. We reasoned that perceptions of threat posed by shifting demographics might depend on individuals’ folk economic beliefs. Across three experiments, White Americans read about projected demographic changes (“threat”) or changes in online dating (“control”) before expressing support for political policies. They also indicated whether they viewed the U.S. economy as a zero- or non-zero-sum system. Relative to controls, participants in the threat condition expressed more support for conservative policies, but only if they conceptualized the economy in zero-sum terms; those who conceptualized the economy in non-zero-sum terms actually endorsed slightly more liberal positions under “threat.” However, these effects obtained only when participants expressed their economic views before their political attitudes. This suggests folk economic beliefs shape how people respond to threats to their majority status, provided those beliefs are first made explicit.

When we hear a story, do we naturally imagine the visual scene being described? Do the representations derived in the course of normal language comprehension interact with visual perception broadly? For example, might understanding language change how we interpret visual scenes, even when the visual scenes are unrelated to the linguistic content? In our study, people interpreted an ambiguous image after they had (1) seen real visual motion either upward or downward (Experiment 1), (2) read a story describing physical motion (Experiment 2), or (3) read a story describing abstract motion (Experiment 3). The ambiguous figure could have been seen as a bird flying upward or a different bird flying downward, and the participants were simply asked to click on or draw a worm in the bird's beak. People's interpretations of the ambiguous figure were affected by viewing real motion and by reading literal stories describing physical motion, but not by the abstract motion stories. These findings suggest that processing linguistic descriptions of physical (but not abstract) motion can bias perceptual processing in a broad sense; in this case, reading about physical motion changed people's interpretation of an unrelated ambiguous image.

In distinguishing itself from other distributed approaches to cognition, Anderson's theory of neural reuse is susceptible to some of the same criticisms that have been leveled at modular approaches. Specifically, neural reuse theories state that: (1) the “working” of a given brain circuit is fixed, rather than shaped by its input, and (2) that high-level cognitive behaviors can be cleanly mapped onto a specific set of brain circuits in a non-contextualized manner.