On the dynamics of action representations evoked by names of manipulable objects.

Abstract

Two classes of hand action representations are shown to be activated by listening to the name of a manipulable object (e.g., cellphone). The functional action associated with the proper use of an object is evoked soon after the onset of its name, as indicated by primed execution of that action. Priming is sustained throughout the duration of the word's enunciation. Volumetric actions (those used to simply lift an object) show a negative priming effect at the onset of a word, followed by a short-lived positive priming effect. This time-course pattern is explained by a dual-process mechanism involving frontal and parietal lobes for resolving conflict between candidate motor responses. Both types of action representations are proposed to be part of the conceptual knowledge recruited when the name of a manipulable object is encountered, although functional actions play a more central role in the representation of lexical concepts.

Putting concepts into context

“…Another study that presented object names auditorily obtained analogous results—information that is directly available from viewing the object (here, information about how one grasps an object to move it) became active later and for a shorter duration than information about how an object is manipulated in order to use it – i.e., its function (Bub & Masson, 2012). Thus, in contrast to when primes are visual, when the primes (or the sole presented words) are auditory, activation of perceptual information can appear later than functional information (see Garcea & Mahon, 2012 for related work).…”

Verb gapping: An action-gap compatibility study

“…Research on these issues is still in its beginning. According to some proposals, temporal parameters may be crucial (Bergen, 2007;Borreggine & Kaschak, 2006;Boulenger et al, 2006;de Vega et al, 2013;de Vega & Urrutia, 2011;Nazir et al, 2008; see also Kaschak, Zwaan, Aveyard, & Yaxley, 2006;Meteyard et al, 2007; see also Bub & Masson, 2012), i.e., the type of effect may depend on the temporal overlap between mentally simulating described actions and planning actually to be performed motor actions. I will come back to the role of temporal parameters in the following, when I will consider three possible accounts of the opposite types of effect in the present experiment and the preceding studies employing the reading-by-rotating paradigm Zwaan & Taylor, 2006;Zwaan et al, 2010).…”

Uncovering the architecture of action semantics.

“…Furthermore, although there is evidence that both use and grasp actions are evoked by the sight of tools (e.g., Bub, Masson, & Cree, 2008; Tucker & Ellis, 1998), their activations follow different time courses: actions based on object structure (grasps) are elicited rapidly and quickly decay, while tool use actions are activated more slowly but maintained over longer intervals of time, making them capable of producing short-term interference effects (Jax & Buxbaum, 2010). Finally, tool use actions (“functional” actions) are more strongly evoked by tool words than grasp actions (“volumetric” actions), data that have been taken to indicate that use actions may be more central to linguistically-accessed tool concepts than grasp actions (Bub et al, 2008; see also Bub & Masson, 2012; Masson, Bub, & Newton-Taylor, 2008). Thus, since tool use knowledge exhibits characteristics typical of semantic memory (see also Buxbaum & Kalénine, 2010), we focus our research on understanding the organization of action features associated with skilled tool use actions.…”