Spatial iconicity affects semantic relatedness judgments

Zwaan, Rolf A.; Yaxley, Richard H.

doi:10.3758/bf03196557

Cited by 179 publications

(213 citation statements)

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“…EYE/FOOT). In contrast to previous experiments using a similar design with words referring to real-world objects (Zwaan & Yaxley, 2003b), no congruency effect was observed for words referring to body parts, presented in a congruent compared to an incongruent spatial position. Interestingly, though, an effect of distance was observed reflected in a slight increase in error rates and reaction times with increased distance between the body parts.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 53%

“…Zwaan & Yaxley, 2003b). To assess the robustness of the spatial congruency effect and the body distance effect, we conducted an additional analysis.…”

Section: Individual Subjects Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Several studies have shown a spatial congruency effect for word pairs that are presented in a spatial position that is congruent to the actual position of the words' referents (also referred to as 'an iconic relationship between words and their meaning'; cf. Louwerse & Jeuniaux, 2010;Zwaan & Yaxley, 2003a, 2003b. For instance, subjects are faster to identify if two words belong to the same semantic category if the words are presented in a congruent spatial position (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The relation between body semantics and spatial body representations

Elk

Blanke

2011

Acta Psychologica

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The present study addressed the relation between body semantics (i.e. semantic knowledge about the human body) and spatial body representations, by presenting participants with word pairs, one below the other, referring to body parts. The spatial position of the word pairs could be congruent (e.g. EYE / MOUTH) or incongruent (MOUTH / EYE) with respect to the spatial position of the words' referents. In addition, the spatial distance between the words' referents was varied, resulting in word pairs referring to body parts that are close (e.g. EYE / MOUTH) or far in space (e.g. EYE / FOOT). A spatial congruency effect was observed when subjects made an iconicity judgment (Experiments 2 and 3) but not when making a semantic relatedness judgment (Experiment 1). In addition, when making a semantic relatedness judgment (Experiment 1) reaction times increased with increased distance between the body parts but when making an iconicity judgment (Experiments 2 and 3) reaction times decreased with increased distance. These findings suggest that the processing of body-semantics results in the activation of a detailed visuo-spatial body representation that is modulated by the specific task requirements. We discuss these new data with respect to theories of embodied cognition and body semantics.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 53%

“…Zwaan & Yaxley, 2003b). To assess the robustness of the spatial congruency effect and the body distance effect, we conducted an additional analysis.…”

Section: Individual Subjects Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The relation between body semantics and spatial body representations

Elk

Blanke

2011

Acta Psychologica

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“…This circularity problem (Crawford, 2009) is even more problematic because language encodes embodied relationships (Louwerse, 2008). For example, remember the findings by Zwaan & Yaxley (2003), revealing that participants were faster to confirm that the 45 words branch and root were related when branch was presented above root, compared to when these words were presented in the reverse spatial layout. Louwerse (2008) shows that the words branch and root occur more frequently in the order branch-root than in the root-branch order in human language.…”

Section: Linguistic Explanationsmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…When participants were asked to judge whether two words were semantically related, their relative positions on the screen influenced the speed with which these judgments were performed (Zwaan & Yaxley, 2003). More precisely, when the relative position of these words was congruent with their typical locations in the real words, judgments were faster compared to when the words were presented in relative spatial positions incongruent with their typical locations.…”

Section: Grounding Concrete Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Abstract Concepts in Grounded Cognition

Lakens¹

2017

Preprint

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concepts in grounded cognitionAbstracte concepten in gegronde cognitie References 115 Summary in Dutch 133Curriculum Vitae 139 5 Introduction M orality, time, and valence are highly abstract concepts. Exactly how people are able to think and talk about abstract concepts is a question that has intrigued philosophers and scientists for centuries. In this thesis I focus on the question how people represent the meaning of abstract concepts, by investigating whether abstract concepts are understood through the use of metaphors. Metaphors allow people to think about abstract concepts in terms of concrete experiences. For example, the scales of Lady Justice are a metaphor for justice. People might not be able to see the future, but it can be represented as being ahead of us. Black knights in fairytales are usually evil, and the color of their armor is a metaphoric representation of the relation they have with the knights in shining armor. These and similar metaphors are not only used to intentionally communicate the meaning of abstract concepts, but these metaphoric representations also underlie abstract conceptual thought. How the meaning of abstract concepts is grounded in concrete experiences is the topic of this dissertation.Broadly speaking, two views exist on how abstract concepts are represented in our mind. On the one hand, amodal views share the common theme that people think in a purely symbolic language, where concepts 6 are represented as artificial symbols, and computational operations are performed upon these symbols during conceptual processing (Dennett, 1969;Fodor, 1975;Pylyshyn, 1984;Jackendoff, 2002). These artificial symbols are inherently non-perceptual; none of the original sensory or motor information from any modality (e.g., vision, touch, sound, smell, etc) which created these symbols is present when the final amodal symbols are used to represent concepts. On the other hand, several views on the representation of concepts have emerged over the last decennium which all share the idea that conceptual processing is perceptual in nature (e.g., Barsalou, 1999;Gallese & Lakoff, 2005;Glenberg & Kaschak, 2002;Jeannerod, 2001;Pulvermüller, 1999;Zwaan, 2004). According to these grounded approaches to cognition, conceptual thought consists of representations built on concrete sensorimotor information. For example, understanding the word 'kick' is assumed to depend at least in part on the activation of the muscles used to perform a kicking motion.As a result of the growing number of empirical studies that have investigated the role of sensorimotor activation in language comprehension, a consensus is emerging that sensorimotor areas in the brain are activated when people read words related to concrete concepts (Zwaan, 2009;Mahon & Caramazza, 2009;Vigliocco & Meteyard, 2008). For example, thinking about the color of a banana activates brain areas in the visual cortex (Simmons, Ramjee, Beauchamp, McRae, Martin, & Barsalou, 2007). Thinking about the color of a banana leads to remarkably similar pattern...

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Social Psychology and Language: Words, Utterances, and Conversations

Holtgraves

2010

Handbook of Social Psychology

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Spatial iconicity affects semantic relatedness judgments

Cited by 179 publications

References 20 publications

The relation between body semantics and spatial body representations

The relation between body semantics and spatial body representations

Abstract Concepts in Grounded Cognition

Social Psychology and Language: Words, Utterances, and Conversations

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