Flexible recruitment of semantic richness: context modulates body-object interaction effects in lexical-semantic processing

Abstract

Body-object interaction (BOI) is a semantic richness variable that measures the perceived ease with which the human body can physically interact with a word's referent. Lexical and semantic processing is facilitated when words are associated with relatively more bodily experience. To date, BOI effects have only been examined in the context of one semantic categorization task (SCT; is it imageable?). It has been argued that semantic processing is dynamic and can be modulated by context. We examined these influences by testing how task knowledge modulated BOI effects. Participants discriminated between the same sets of entity (high- and low-BOI) and action words in each of four SCTs. Task framing was manipulated: participants were told about one (is it an action? vs. is it an entity?) or both (action or entity? vs. entity or action?) categories of words in the decision task. Facilitatory BOI effects were only observed when participants knew that “entity” was part of the decision category. That BOI information was only useful when participants had expectations that entity words would be presented suggests a strong role for the decision context in lexical-semantic processing, and supports a dynamic view of conceptual knowledge.

Effects of Emotional Experience for Abstract Words in the Stroop Task

“…That is, emotion information may be recruited even when it does not facilitate task performance, but this recruitment could be subject to task context. This characterization would be consistent with research on BOI effects and concrete words, which has shown that the presence of facilitatory BOI effects depends on the semantic decision category used (Tousignant & Pexman, ), and also on participant strategies (Hansen, Siakaluk, & Pexman, ). A third possibility is that recruitment of emotion information is obligatory when processing abstract words.…”

Introduction to the research topic meaning in mind: semantic richness effects in language processing

“…Finally, there is evidence supporting embodied frameworks of semantic memory from studies reported by Esopenko et al (2012); McNorgan (2012). Further support for the embodied framework is provided by Hansen et al (2012); Hargreaves et al (2012b); Newcombe et al (2012); Tousignant and Pexman (2012); Yap et al (2012), as all of these studies report body-object interaction effects (faster processing for words that refer to objects the human body can easily interact with) in tasks that include naming, lexical decision, and semantic categorization. Convergent evidence that perceptual and sensorimotor information are important dimensions of meaning comes from the observations of Hargreaves and Pexman (2012); Newcombe et al (2012); Yap et al (2012) by which imageability effects (faster responses for words that are associated with imagery) are reported in a number of word recognition tasks.…”

“…Contributions by Gould et al (2012); Hansen et al (2012); Hargreaves and Pexman (2012); Recchia and Jones (2012); Tousignant and Pexman (2012); Yap et al (2012) demonstrate that the process of generating meaning from print is a dynamic one, where contextual factors like task demands shape the information that is generated from letter strings. These demonstrations are consistent with the notion of a flexible lexical processor (Balota and Yap, 2006) that is sensitive to task contexts so as to optimize task performance via attentional control.…”

Effects of Emotional and Sensorimotor Knowledge in Semantic Processing of Concrete and Abstract Nouns

“…Several studies have examined the influence of knowledge gained through sensory experience, as measured by imageability (i.e., how easily words evoke mental images), in lexical processing. Imageability has been shown to facilitate responding in lexical decision, word naming, picture naming, progressive demasking, and semantic categorization tasks (Balota et al, 2004; Bennett et al, 2011; Yap et al, 2012). Additional studies have examined the influence of knowledge gained through motor experience in lexical processing, as indexed by a dimension known as body-object interaction (BOI), which measures perceptions of the ease with which a human body can physically interact with a word’s referent.…”