Integratibility of Words and Their Referents into Embodied Representations

Embodied theories of language comprehension suggest that sentence comprehension involves a perceptual simulation of the objects, agents, and event described within the sentence using the same perception and action systems we use when we interact with the world. Past research shows that within experiments, the integratibility between the perceptual stimuli and cognitive representation influences reaction time to sensibility questions. This experiment was designed to investigate the question of whether embodied cognitive representations contain visual, semantic, and phonological properties and if some of these properties contribute to integratibility more than others. Participants listened to sentences describing the transfer of an object either towards or away from their body. They were then shown two pictures of an object that was either a visual, semantic or phonological competitor to the object described in the sentence. The two pictures of the competitor created an illusion of motion that either matched or mismatched the direction of motion described in the sentence. After viewing the two pictures, participants were asked a question to which their reaction time was recorded. A compatibility effect was said to have occurred if the reaction times for the match condition were faster than the mismatch condition.