Kicking calculators: Contribution of embodied representations to sentence comprehension

Evocation of motor representations during sentence comprehension was examined by training subjects to make a hand action in response to a visual cue while listening to a sentence. Sentences referred to manipulable objects that were either related or unrelated to the cued action. Related actions pertained either to the function of the object or to its volumetric properties (e.g., shape). The results demonstrate priming of hand actions even though the sentences referred to non-manual interactions with manipulable objects. When sentences described an attentional interaction (looking at the calculator), only functional actions were primed. Sentences describing a non-manual physical interaction (kicking the calculator) primed volumetric as well as functional actions. We describe how seemingly irrelevant motor representations can play a role in constructing sentence meaning. 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. There is mounting evidence that the sensory-motor system is intimately involved in conceptual operations (Barsalou, 1999; Gallese & Lakoff, 2005; Glenberg, 1997; Wilson, 2002). In some respects this idea is not so counterintuitive. For example, we can answer questions using our ‘‘mind’s eye” (e.g., Would this couch look good in our living room?). Research has also demonstrated, however, that we use other sensory-motor imagery, including our ‘‘mind’s hands”, and we do so in a covert and involuntary fashion. For example, Klatzky, Pellegrino, McCloskey, and Doherty (1989) found that judgment of the sensibility of a sentence was facilitated by performing a relevant hand action in advance. Glenberg and Kaschak (2002) had subjects judge the sensibility of sentences by pressing one of two buttons, to indicate sensible, vs. non-sensible. One of the buttons re. All rights reserved. ts from the Natural