Many studies have suggested that the motor system is organized in a hierarchical fashion, around the prototypical end location associated with using objects. However, most studies supporting the hierarchical view have used well-known actions and objects that are highly over-learned. Accordingly, at present it is unclear if the hierarchical principle applies to learning the use of novel objects as well. In the present study we found that when learning to use a novel object subjects acquired an action representation of the (...) end location associated with using the object, as evidenced by slower responses in an action observation task, when the object was presented at an incorrect end location. By showing the importance of knowledge about end locations when learning to use a novel object, the present study suggests that end locations are a fundamental organizing feature of the human motor system. (shrink)

There is considerable evidence that language comprehenders derive lexical‐semantic meaning by mentally simulating perceptual and motor attributes of described events. However, the nature of these simulations—including the level of detail that is incorporated and contexts under which simulations occur—is not well understood. Here, we examine the effects of first‐ versus third‐person perspective on mental simulations during sentence comprehension. First‐person sentences describing physical transfer towards or away from the body (e.g., “You threw the microphone,” “You caught the microphone”) modulated response latencies (...) when responses were made along a front‐back axis, consistent with the action‐sentence compatibility effect (ACE). This effect was not observed for third‐person sentences (“He threw the microphone,” “He caught the microphone”). The ACE was observed when making responses along a left‐right axis for third‐person, but not first‐person sentences. Abstract sentences (e.g., “He heard the message”) did not show an ACE along either axis. These results show that perspective is a detail that is simulated during action sentence comprehension, and that motoric activations are flexible and affected by the pronominal perspective used in the sentence. (shrink)

One of the central insights of the embodied cognition (EC) movement is that cognition is closely tied to action. In this paper, I formulate an EC-inspired hypothesis concerning social cognition. In this domain, most think that our capacity to understand and interact with one another is best explained by appeal to some form of mindreading. I argue that prominent accounts of mindreading likely contain a significant lacuna. Evidence indicates that what I call an agent’s actional processes and states—her goals, needs, (...) intentions, desires, and so on—likely play important roles in and for mindreading processes. If so, a full understanding of mindreading processes and their role in cognition more broadly will require an understanding of how actional mental processes interact with, influence, or take part in mindreading processes. (shrink)

The valence–space metaphor research area investigates the metaphorical mapping of valenced concepts onto space. Research findings from this area indicate that positive, neutral, and negative concepts are associated with upward, midward, and downward locations, respectively, in the vertical plane. The same research area has also indicated that such concepts seem to have no preferential location on the horizontal plane. The approach–avoidance effect consists in decreasing the distance between positive stimuli and the body and increasing the distance between negative stimuli and (...) the body. Thus, the valence–space metaphor accounts for the mapping of valenced concepts onto the vertical and horizontal planes, and the approach–avoidance effect accounts for the mapping of valenced concepts onto the “depth” plane. By using a cube conceived for the study of allocation of valenced concepts onto 3D space, we show in three studies that positive concepts are placed in upward locations and near the participants’ body, negative concepts are placed in downward locations and far from the participants’ body, and neutral concepts are placed in between these concepts in both planes. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Cognitive Linguistics Jahrgang: 27 Heft: 2 Seiten: 181-203.

According to grounded cognition, words whose semantics contain sensory-motor features activate sensory-motor simulations, which, in turn, interact with spatial responses to produce grounded congruency effects. Growing evidence shows these congruency effects do not always occur, suggesting instead that the grounded features in a word's meaning do not become active automatically across contexts. Researchers sometimes use this as evidence that concepts are not grounded, further concluding that grounded information is peripheral to the amodal cores of concepts. We first review broad evidence (...) that words do not have conceptual cores, and that even the most salient features in a word's meaning are not activated automatically. Then, in three experiments, we provide further evidence that grounded congruency effects rely dynamically on context, with the central grounded features in a concept becoming active only when the current context makes them salient. Even when grounded features are central to a word's meaning, their activation depends on task conditions. (shrink)

We performed three experiments to investigate whether adjectives can modulate the sensorimotor activation elicited by nouns. In Experiment 1, nouns of graspable objects were used as stimuli. Participants had to decide if each noun referred to a natural or artifact, by performing either a precision or a power reach‐to‐grasp movement. Response grasp could be compatible or incompatible with the grasp typically used to manipulate the objects to which the nouns referred. The results revealed faster reaction times (RTs) in compatible than (...) in incompatible trials. In Experiment 2, the nouns were combined with adjectives expressing either disadvantageous information about object graspability (e.g., sharp) or information about object color (e.g., reddish). No difference in RTs between compatible and incompatible conditions was found when disadvantageous adjectives were used. Conversely, a compatibility effect occurred when color adjectives were combined with nouns referring to natural objects. Finally, in Experiment 3 the nouns were combined with adjectives expressing tactile or shape proprieties of the objects (e.g., long or smooth). Results revealed faster RTs in compatible than in incompatible condition for both noun categories. Taken together, our findings suggest that adjectives can shape the sensorimotor activation elicited by nouns of graspable objects, highlighting that language simulation goes beyond the single‐word level. (shrink)

There is considerable evidence that language comprehenders derive lexical-semantic meaning by mentally simulating perceptual and motor attributes of described events. However, the nature of these simulations—including the level of detail that is incorporated and contexts under which simulations occur—is not well understood. Here, we examine the effects of first- versus third-person perspective on mental simulations during sentence comprehension. First-person sentences describing physical transfer towards or away from the body modulated response latencies when responses were made along a front-back axis, consistent (...) with the action-sentence compatibility effect. This effect was not observed for third-person sentences. The ACE was observed when making responses along a left-right axis for third-person, but not first-person sentences.sentences did not show an ACE along either axis. These results show that perspective is a detail that is simulated during action sentence comprehension, and that motoric activations are flexible and affected by the pronominal perspective used in the sentence. (shrink)

Philosophers of embodied and situated cognition have provided convincing explanations of what objects do in affective processes (e.g., in emotion regulation). They have often used the concept of 'affective affordance' to account for the affective role of objects but it is not clear how this concept relates to other concepts of affordance, in particular those used in empirical works in cognitive science. We start to fill this gap by providing a new definition of affective affordances and we suggest a possible (...) way to test this novel theoretical construct through a kinematic analysis of hand movements. (shrink)

Silent gesture is not considered to be linguistic, on par with spoken and sign languages. It is claimed that silent gestures, unlike language, represent events holistically, without compositional structure. However, recent research has demonstrated that gesturers use consistent strategies when representing objects and events, and that there are behavioral and clinically relevant limits on what form a gesture may take to effect a particular meaning. This systematicity challenges a holistic interpretation of silent gesture, which predicts that there should be no (...) stable form‐meaning correspondence across event representations. Here, we demonstrate to the contrary that untrained gesturers systematically manipulate the form of their gestures when representing events with and without a theme (e.g., Someone popped the balloon vs. Someone walked), that is, transitive and intransitive events. We elicited silent gestures and annotated them for manual features active in coding transitivity distinctions in sign languages. We trained linear support vector machines to make item‐by‐item transitivity predictions based on these features. Prediction accuracy was good across the entire dataset, thus demonstrating that systematicity in silent gesture can be explained with recourse to subunits. We argue that handshape features are constructs co‐opted from cognitive systems subserving manual action production and comprehension for communicative purposes, which may integrate into the linguistic system of emerging sign languages. We further suggest that nonsigners tend to map event participants to each hand, a strategy found across genetically and geographically distinct sign languages, suggesting the strategy's cognitive foundation. (shrink)

Affordances, i.e. the opportunity of actions offered by the environment, are one of the central research topics for the theoretical perspectives that view cognition as emerging from the interaction between the environment and the body. Being at the bridge between perception and action, affordances help to question a dichotomous view of perception and action. While Gibson’s view of affordances is mainly externalist, many contemporary approaches define affordances as the product of long-term visuomotor associations in the brain. These studies have emphasized (...) the fact that affordances are activated automatically, independently from the context and the previous intention to act: for example, affordances related to objects’ size would emerge even if the task does not require focusing on size. This emphasis on the automaticity of affordances has led to overlook their flexibility and contextual-dependency. In this contribution I will outline and discuss recent perspectives and evidence that reveal the flexibility and context-dependency of affordances, clarifying how they are modulated by the physical, cultural and social context. I will focus specifically on social affordances, i.e. on how perception of affordances might be influenced by the presence of multiple actors having different goals. (shrink)