Moving words: dynamic representations in language comprehension*

Zwaan, Rolf A.; Madden, Carol J.; Yaxley, Richard H.; Aveyard, Mark

doi:10.1207/s15516709cog2804_5

Cited by 137 publications

(127 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…For example, Zwaan and Yaxley (2003) found that spatial iconicity affects semantic relatedness judgments (e.g., people were faster to judge BASEMENT and ATTIC as semantically related words when they saw ATTIC above BASEMENT than when they saw BASEMENT above ATTIC). Zwaan, Madden, Yaxley, and Aveyard (2004) have also shown effects of language on perceptual judgments. For example, participants were shown pictures of objects and asked to judge whether the second object was the same as the first.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…According to this view, we activate positional and orientational information when presented with linguistic stimuli (e.g., Zwaan et al, 2004;Zwaan & Yaxley, 2003). In the case of spatial prepositions, this information might correspond to core members of the spatial prepositional categories, leading to the observed shift in picture representation toward the center of the prepositional category when a spatial preposition has been processed during encoding.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Spatial language influences memory for spatial scenes

Feist

Gentner

2007

Memory & Cognition

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Does language influence recognition for spatial scenes? In Experiments 1 and 2, participants viewed ambiguous pictures, with or without spatial sentences. In a yes-no recognition task, only the spatial sentences group made more false alarms toward the center of the spatial category than in the other direction; three other comparison groups showed no such tendency. This shift toward the core of the semantic category suggests that spatial language interacted with perceptual information during encoding. In Experiment 3, we varied the materials to test the interactive encoding account against a separate encoding account in which separately stored sentences are accessed during picture recognition. The results support the interactive encoding account in which spatial language influences the encoding and memory of spatial relations. Memory & Cognition 2007, 35 (2), 283-296 M. I. Feist, feist@louisiana.edu

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial language influences memory for spatial scenes

Feist

Gentner

2007

Memory & Cognition

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“…Differentiating between the umbrellas is thus dependent on one's representation of the sensorimotor characteristics associated with the object. This is something a propositional representation of text comprehension, in which the umbrella might be represented as a list of features or a node in a propositional network that would not differ according to location, cannot easily account for (Zwaan, Madden, Yaxley, & Aveyard, 2004).…”

Section: Present Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Expertise and its embodiment: Examining the impact of sensorimotor skill expertise on the representation of action-related text

Holt

Beilock

2006

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

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In two experiments, we explored how novice and expert athletes represent the everyday and sportspecific objects and actions that they read about. Novice and expert ice hockey players (Experiment 1) and football players (Experiment 2) read sentences describing everyday or sport-specific situations and then judged whether a pictured item (either matching the action implied in the previous sentence or not) was mentioned in the preceding sentence. The sentences in Experiment 1 consisted of everyday and hockey-specific scenarios. The sentences in Experiment 2 depicted football scenarios implying football-specific or non-football-specific actions anyone might perform. Everyone responded most quickly to items that matched the sentence-implied actions for everyday and non-sport-specific actions. Only athletes showed this effect for their respective sport-specific scenarios. Differentiating between the same item in different action orientations is thought to be driven by embodied knowledge containing the sensorimotor characteristics of what one is reading about. We show that possessing this type of representation depends on experience interacting with objects and performing the actions in question.

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“…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)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9).…”

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confidence: 99%

Visual motion aftereffect from understanding motion language

Dils

Boroditsky

2010

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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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...

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Moving words: dynamic representations in language comprehension*

Cited by 137 publications

References 24 publications

Spatial language influences memory for spatial scenes

Spatial language influences memory for spatial scenes

Expertise and its embodiment: Examining the impact of sensorimotor skill expertise on the representation of action-related text

Visual motion aftereffect from understanding motion language

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