Grasp It Loudly! Supporting Actions with Semantically Congruent Spoken Action Words

Abstract

Evidence for cross-talk between motor and language brain structures has accumulated over the past several years. However, while a significant amount of research has focused on the interaction between language perception and action, little attention has been paid to the potential impact of language production on overt motor behaviour.The aim of the present study was to test whether verbalizing during a grasp-to-displace action would affect motor behaviour and, if so, whether this effect would depend on the semantic content of the pronounced word (Experiment I). Furthermore, we sought to test the stability of such effects in a different group of participants and investigate at which stage of the motor act language intervenes (Experiment II). For this, participants were asked to reach, grasp and displace an object while overtly pronouncing verbal descriptions of the action (“grasp” and “put down”) or unrelated words (e.g. “butterfly” and “pigeon”).Fine-grained analyses of several kinematic parameters such as velocity peaks revealed that when participants produced action-related words their movements became faster compared to conditions in which they did not verbalize or in which they produced words that were not related to the action. These effects likely result from the functional interaction between semantic retrieval of the words and the planning and programming of the action.Therefore, links between (action) language and motor structures are significant to the point that language can refine overt motor behaviour.

Word-induced postural changes reflect a tight interaction between motor and lexico-semantic representations

“…Increased grip force was recorded approximately 260 ms after hearing action-related verbs but not after hearing non-action nouns. Similar effects of word type on arm movement have been observed in several other kinematic studies (Boulenger et al , 2006; Fargier et al , 2012; Aravena et al, 2012). These results indicate that the link between language and motor control is sensitive to subtle manipulations of linguistic context.…”

Motor resonance facilitates movement execution: an ERP and kinematic study

“…These effects are in accordance with other studies that have investigated the activation of motor areas during language processing. Indeed, it has been shown that not only observing actions but also perceiving or pronouncing action words can activate the motor system (Tettamanti et al, 2005; Aziz-Zadeh and Damasio, 2008; Boulenger et al, 2009; Pulvermüller and Fadiga, 2010; Fargier et al, 2012). Aravena et al (2010), for instance, studied whether the compatibility of a performed hand action and an action described in a sentence would influence brain motor potentials.…”

DiViDu – An Open Source Solution for Dual Task Experiments with Integrated Divided Visual Field Paradigm

“…[8], reading [5], naming [12], verbal fluency [6] and verbal memory tasks [7]. Similarly, the complexity of the motor task highly various between the experiments including only one [6] or both hands [7].…”

“…Similarly, the complexity of the motor task highly various between the experiments including only one [6] or both hands [7]. Furthermore, the task and stimuli language, the experimental setup as well as the used software differs between the experiments [4][5][6][7][8], [12]. Open Source software allows researchers to reproduce results, as well as to modify only one or a few aspects of an experimental setting to produce comparable results.…”