Spatial representations activated during real-time comprehension of verbs

TLDR

Prior studies show that participants consistently assign spatial image schemas to verbs, suggesting language activates spatial representations. The study tests whether verb comprehension activates spatial representations that influence processing along the same axis. Participants listened to short sentences while performing a visual discrimination task in Experiment 1 and a picture‑memory task in Experiment 2. Reaction times revealed that verbs’ horizontal or vertical image schemas interacted with the spatial position of stimuli, supporting a perceptual‑motor basis for linguistic representations.

Abstract

Previous research has shown that na_ve participants display a high level of agreement when asked to choose or drawschematic representations, or image schemas, of concrete and abstract verbs [Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2001, Erlbaum, Mawhah, NJ, p. 873]. For example, participants tended to ascribe a horizontal image schema to push, and a vertical image schema to respect. This consistency in offline data is preliminary evidence that language invokes spatial forms of representation. It also provided norms that were used in the present research to investigate the activation of spatial image schemas during online language comprehension. We predicted that if comprehending a verb activates a spatial representation that is extended along a particular horizontal or vertical axis, it will affect other forms of spatial processing along that axis. Participants listened to short sentences while engaged in a visual discrimination task (Experiment 1) and a picture memory task (Experiment 2). In both cases, reaction times showed an interaction between the horizontal/vertical nature of the verb's image schema, and the horizontal/vertical position of the visual stimuli. We argue that such spatial effects of verb comprehension provide evidence for the perceptual–motor character of linguistic representations.