When motor congruency modulates immediate memory for objects

Lagacé, Sébastien; Guérard, Katherine

doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2015.02.009

Cited by 23 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Contrary to these expectations, however, the results showed no difference between nonmanipulable and manipulable objects in how memory was affected by the motor interference task. Other studies, however, have obtained interactions between motor tasks and short‐term memory for object pictures (Guerard, Guerrette, & Rowe, ; Lagacé & Guérard, ). A study using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), a technique by which an area of the cortex can be temporarily disrupted, showed that this affected performance only in tasks in which participants were explicitly asked to make judgments about manual object manipulation.…”

Section: Situated Conceptualizationmentioning

confidence: 91%

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Pecher

2017

Topics in Cognitive Science

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To explain how abstract concepts are grounded in sensory-motor experiences, several theories have been proposed. I will discuss two of these proposals, Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Situated Cognition, and argue why they do not fully explain grounding. A central idea in Conceptual Metaphor Theory is that image schemas ground abstract concepts in concrete experiences. Image schemas might themselves be abstractions, however, and therefore do not solve the grounding problem. Moreover, image schemas are too simple to explain the full richness of abstract concepts. Situated cognition might provide such richness. Research in our laboratory, however, has shown that even for concrete concepts, sensory-motor grounding is task dependent. Therefore, it is questionable whether abstract concepts can be significantly grounded in sensory-motor processing.

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Section: Situated Conceptualizationmentioning

confidence: 91%

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Pecher

2017

Topics in Cognitive Science

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“…It has been suggested that iconic manual representations are generated by selecting salient features of the referent from our conceptual knowledge (e.g., the wings of a butterfly), schematizing them into a manual structure (e.g., linking the wings with human arms), and producing an iconic gesture that evokes the selected features (e.g., flapping arms to represent a butterfly) (Emmorey, 2014;Taub, 2001;Van Nispen et al, 2017). If we ascribe to embodied theories of gesture production (Cook & Tanenhaus, 2009;Hostetter & Alibali, 2008;Kita, Alibali, & Chu, 2017) and assume that our conceptual knowledge is grounded in motor schemas (Barsalou, 1999(Barsalou, , 2008Lagacé & Guérard, 2015) then it is likely that many gestures may converge in the form to represent a concept. Therefore, the affordances of the manual modality as well as our shared mental schemas may be the two forces that come together and result in iconic gestures that converge in form and meaning across a group of individuals.…”

Section: Iconicity and Systematicity 1 In The Manual Modalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Hearing non-signers use their gestures to predict iconic form-meaning mappings at first exposure to signs

2019

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The sign languages of deaf communities and the gestures produced by hearing people are communicative systems that exploit the manual-visual modality as means of expression. Despite their striking differences they share the property of iconicity, understood as the direct relationship between a symbol and its referent. Here we investigate whether non-signing hearing adults exploit their implicit knowledge of gestures to bootstrap accurate understanding of the meaning of iconic signs they have never seen before. In Study 1 we show that for some concepts gestures exhibit systematic forms across participants, and share different degrees of form overlap with the signs for the same concepts (full, partial, and no overlap). In Study 2 we found that signs with stronger resemblance with signs are more accurately guessed and are assigned higher iconicity ratings by non-signers than signs with low overlap. In addition, when more people produced a systematic gesture resembling a sign, they assigned higher iconicity ratings to that sign. Furthermore, participants had a bias to assume that signs represent actions and not objects. The similarities between some signs and gestures could be explained by deaf signers and hearing gesturers sharing a conceptual substrate that is rooted in our embodied experiences with the world. The finding that gestural knowledge can ease the interpretation of the meaning of novel signs and predicts iconicity ratings is in line with embodied accounts of cognition and the influence of prior knowledge to acquire new schemas. Through these mechanisms we propose that iconic gestures that overlap in form with signs may serve as some type of 'manual cognates' that help non-signing adults to break into a new language at first exposure.

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“…Stronger evidence for a causal role of sensory-motor processing can be obtained by investigating the effect of reduced availability of sensory-motor processes on cognition [60,61]. Indeed, some studies have shown that concurrent motor interference reduces performance in object naming [62] and picture memory [63,64] more for manipulable objects (hammer) than for nonmanipulable objects (elephant). Other studies, however, systematically failed to find evidence that performance for manipulable objects was disrupted more by concurrent motor tasks than performance for nonmanipulable objects ( [61,[65][66][67], see also [68]).…”

Section: Situated Cognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Boundaries to grounding abstract concepts

Pecher¹,

Zeelenberg²

2018

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Grounded theories of cognition claim that concept representation relies on the systems for perception and action. The sensory-motor grounding of abstract concepts presents a challenge for these theories. Some accounts propose that abstract concepts are indirectly grounded via image schemas or situations. Recent research, however, indicates that the role of sensory-motor processing for concrete concepts may be limited, providing evidence against the idea that abstract concepts are grounded via concrete concepts. Hybrid models that combine language and sensory-motor experience may provide a more viable account of abstract and concrete representations. We propose that sensory-motor grounding is important during acquisition and provides structure to concepts. Later activation of concepts relies on this structure but does not necessarily involve sensory-motor processing. Language is needed to create coherent concepts from diverse sensory-motor experiences.This article is part of the theme issue 'Varieties of abstract concepts: development, use and representation in the brain'.

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When motor congruency modulates immediate memory for objects

Cited by 23 publications

References 37 publications

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Hearing non-signers use their gestures to predict iconic form-meaning mappings at first exposure to signs

Boundaries to grounding abstract concepts

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