Object Shape and Orientation Do Not Routinely Influence Performance During Language Processing

Abstract

The role of visual representations during language processing remains unclear: They could be activated as a necessary part of the comprehension process, or they could be less crucial and influence performance in a task-dependent manner. In the present experiments, participants read sentences about an object. The sentences implied that the object had a specific shape or orientation. They then either named a picture of that object (Experiments 1 and 3) or decided whether the object had been mentioned in the sentence (Experiment 2). Orientation information did not reliably influence performance in any of the experiments. Shape representations influenced performance most strongly when participants were asked to compare a sentence with a picture or when they were explicitly asked to use mental imagery while reading the sentences. Thus, in contrast to previous claims, implied visual information often does not contribute substantially to the comprehension process during normal reading.

Arguments about the nature of concepts: Symbols, embodiment, and beyond

“…Similar phenomena have been observed in the context of visual motion processing (e.g., Pirog et al, 2008; Dils and Boroditsky, 2010; but see Pavan and Baggio, 2010), color processing (e.g., Simmons et al, 2007), visual form processing (e.g. Zwaan et al, 2002; but see Rommers, Meyer, and Huettig 2013), gustatory processing (Simmons et al, 2013), and auditory processing (Kiefer et al, 2008)—and similar considerations apply as to whether the phenomena reflect the format of conceptual representations or rather the processing dynamics that obtain between amodal symbolic representations and input/output systems. What this means, concretely, is that we need explicit bridging hypotheses about the dynamics of activation flow in the system, and those bridging assumptions would need to be investigated prior to deriving inferences about representational format.…”

Long-term repetition priming and semantic interference in a lexical-semantic matching task: tapping the links between object names and colors

“…The observation that object names enabled the long-term retrieval of object-color information stored in memory complements work on language comprehension showing that visual and motor representations of objects can be activated during word and sentence processing (for a review, see Zwaan, 2004; although see also Rommers et al, 2013). Such findings have often been interpreted in terms of sensorimotor theories of semantic memory whereby object knowledge is represented in a modality-specific rather than amodal fashion (Barsalou, 1999; although see Mahon and Caramazza, 2008).…”

Why the A/AN prediction effect may be hard to replicate: A rebuttal to DeLong, Urbach & Kutas (2017)

“…We think this opposition is visible in psycholinguistics, too. Conceptual and direct replication research is unfortunately very sparse (but see Nieuwland et al, 2017;Rommers, Meyer, & Huettig, 2013;Zwaan & Pecher, 2012; see also Jäger, Engelmann, & Vasishth, 2017), and even novel but incremental contributions are often considered insufficient for publication.…”