Effect of an unrelated fluent action on word recognition: A case of motor discrepancy

Abstract

It is now well established that motor fluency affects cognitive processes, including memory. In two experiments participants learned a list of words and then performed a recognition task. The original feature of our procedure is that before judging the words they had to perform a fluent gesture (i.e., typing a letter dyad). The dyads comprised letters located on either the right or left side of the keyboard. Participants typed dyads with their right or left index finger; the required movement was either very small (dyad composed of adjacent letters, Experiment 1) or slightly larger (dyad composed of letters separated by one key, experiment 2). The results show that when the gesture was performed in the ipsilateral space the probability of recognizing a word increased (to a lesser extent it is the same with the dominant hand, experiment 2). Moreover, a binary regression logistic highlighted that the probability of recognizing a word was proportional to the speed by which the gesture was performed. These results are discussed in terms of a feeling of familiarity emerging from motor discrepancy.Keywords Memory . Fluency . Discrepancy . GestureThe way people conceive the world is intrinsically dependent on body specificity and on the way they interact with their environment (Casasanto, 2009). The aim of this study was to extend previous findings (i.e., typing activity) by showing that recognition judgment could be influenced by the hand one uses and the space in which a response is given.Manual dominance is one of the main body specificities. The results observed in studies of typing activity showed that skilled typists on the QWERTY keyboard preferred letters typed with the right hand to those typed with the left hand. But when participants were asked to perform the preference task while holding a motor plan in memory (i.e., dual task), the skilled typists' preference was attenuated when the motor plan involved the same finger used to type the presented dyads (see Beilock & Holt, 2007). Jasmin and Casasanto (2012) confirmed that preference judgments are influenced by motor fluency caused by digit-specific typing simulation (the so-called QWERTY effect). Yang, Gallo, and Beilock (2009) showed that the fluency with which participants type the letter dyads to be recognized influences their recognition judgment. Participants found it easier to remember letter dyads typed with two different fingers than those typed with one finger. Indeed, typing a letter dyad with two different fingers is easier than typing a letter dyad with one finger.If manual dominance is one of the main body specificities, laterality is another one: an individual's most fluent actions are those executed with the dominant hand on the dominant side (i.e., for a right-hander, movements of the right hand on the right side). Classic studies from aim-pointing tasks have already demonstrated that ipsilateral actions are carried out more easily and faster than contralateral actions for both the dominant and the non-dominant hand (Fisk & Goodale, ...

Enactive Memory

“…Thus, the resonance of the actual gesture performed to respond with the potential gesture related to the stimulus, or more precisely their directional compatibility, influenced memory performance. Brouillet et al (2017) went on to test the idea that it might be the motor resonance itself that was behind their results, independent of any link that might exist between the action to be performed and the item to be recognized. For this, they used the well know effect of laterality (i.e., easiness performing a movement in ipsilateral space than contralateral space).…”

Grasping a Chestnut Burr

“…Hence, manual dominance has an effect on stimulus-related consequences through its relations with the valence of a stimulus, but also on end state-related consequences, as it modulates our ability to simulate actions with the right or left hand (Marzoli, Menditto, Lucafò, & Tommasi, 2013; Shen & Sengupta, 2012) and to predict somatosensory consequences of an action (Brouillet et al, 2018). Its effect can even influence recognition judgements (Brouillet, Milhau, Brouillet, & Servajean, 2017) and impact driving behaviors (Coren, 1992).…”

The subjective feeling of a gap between conceptual and perceptual fluency is interpreted as a metacognitive signal of pastness

“…We asked the following question at the beginning of the present study: would the discrepancy between an expected word and its readability enhance or impair memory ability? In addition to the fact that this situation occurs in everyday life, there is a substantial body of work that has highlighted that the familiarity felt at the origin of the feeling of memory is associated with the gap between what is expected and what is perceived (the discrepancy attribution hypothesis; Breneiser and Mcdaniel 2006 ; Brouillet et al 2017 ; Goldinger and Hansen 2005 ; Hansen and Wänke 2013 ; Thomas et al 2010 ; Whittlesea 2002 ; Whittlesea and Leboe 2000 , 2003 ; Whittlesea and Williams 1998 , 2000 , 2001a , 2001b ; Wilbert and Haider 2012 ). To answer the aforementioned question, we used an adaptation of the sentence stem paradigm (Whittlesea 1993 ) and changed the background (Reber et al 1998 ) to make the target words either predictable or non-predictable (i.e.…”

“…This idea has been taken up through what several authors have referred to as the discrepancy attribution hypothesis (Whittlesea 2002 ; Whittlesea and Leboe 2000 , 2003 ; Whittlesea and Williams 1998 , 2000 , 2001a , 2001b ), which states that a feeling of familiarity can arise depending on the subjective perception of the gap between what is expected and what is perceived; for instance, it may be more fluent than expected. Several studies have since confirmed this hypothesis (Breneiser and Mcdaniel 2006 ; Brouillet et al 2017 ; Goldinger and Hansen 2005 ; Hansen and Wänke 2013 ; Thomas et al 2010 ; Wilbert and Haider 2012 ).…”