Theories of embodied cognition postulate that perceptual, sensorimotor, and affective properties of concepts support language learning and processing. In this paper, we argue that language ...acquisition, as well as processing, is situated in addition to being embodied. In particular, first, it is the situated nature of initial language development that affords for the developing system to become embodied. Second, the situated nature of language use changes across development and adulthood. We provide evidence from empirical studies for embodied effects of perception, action, and valence as they apply to both embodied cognition and situated cognition across developmental stages. Although the evidence is limited, we urge researchers to consider differentiating embodied cognition within situated context, in order to better understand how these separate mechanisms interact for learning to occur. This delineation also provides further clarity to the study of classroom-based applications and the role of embodied and situated cognition in the study of developmental disorders. We argue that theories of language acquisition need to address for the complex situated context of real-world learning by completing a “circular notion”: observing experimental paradigms in real-world settings and taking these observations to later refine lab-based experiments.
The current research considered the question of how performing an action, or merely preparing the body for action, can have an impact on social judgments related to person perception. Participants ...were asked to ascribe competence and warmth characteristics to a target person by reading a metaphoric text while their body was manipulated to be prepared for the processing of action-congruent information. In Experiment 1, participants whose forward body action matched the metaphoric action described in the text ascribed more competence characteristics to a politician than did control participants. In Experiment 2, participants whose body was merely prepared for forward movement also ascribed more competence characteristics to a politician than did control participants. In addition, the data from Experiment 2 ruled out an alternative non-embodied explanation (i.e., that effect is due to basic associative processes) grounded in the existing literatures on attitudes by demonstrating that body manipulation had no effect on competence when a non-metaphoric text was used. Finally, no evidence was found that body manipulation affects warmth judgments. These studies converge in demonstrating that forward body movements enhance the favorability of competence judgments when these match the metaphoric forward movements described by text.
Recent findings indicate that comprehension of sentences describing metaphorical abstract concepts arises from simulation of motor experience of the described event. Two experiments investigated ...whether action simulation influences "offline" comprehension at a more global discourse level. Participants read a text describing a protagonist making metaphorical forward movements while their body movement (Experiment 1) and body posture (Experiment 2) were manipulated to be either prepared or not prepared for processing of action-congruent information. "Offline" explicit and implicit processing of discourse were measured on accuracy to comprehension questions and the time it took participants to recognize words from discourse as well as judge sentences as correct or incorrect with respect to the content of text. Results revealed that action simulation affected recognition (Experiments 1 and 2) and judgment times (Experiment 1) regarding explicit comprehension measures, and accuracy and judgment times regarding implicit comprehension measures (Experiments 1 and 2). Findings support the conclusion that a simulation system might affect to a greater extent comprehensive processing of information based on deduction and interpretation than shallow processing based on information explicitly provided in the text.
Recent research has suggested that emotional sentences are understood by constructing an emotion simulation of the events being described. The present study aims to investigate whether emotion ...simulation is also involved in online and offline comprehension of larger language segments such as discourse. Participants read a target text describing positive events while their facial postures were manipulated to be either congruent (matching condition) or incongruent (mismatching condition) with emotional valence of the text. In addition, a control condition was included in which participants read the text naturally (without a manipulation of facial posture). The influence of emotion simulation on discourse understanding was assessed by online (self-paced reading times) and offline (verbatim and inference questions) measures of comprehension. The major result was that participants read faster the target text describing positive emotional events while their bodily systems were prepared for processing of positive emotions (matching condition) rather than unprepared (control condition) or prevented from positive emotional processing (mismatching condition). Simulation of positive emotions did not have a significant impact on offline explicit and implicit discourse comprehension. This pattern of results suggests that emotion simulation has an impact on online comprehension, but may not have any effect on offline discourse processing.
Recent findings in psychology, psycholinguistics, and neuroscience present a challenge to current amodal theories by suggesting that cognitive states are not disembodied in language comprehension. ...Accumulating behavioral evidence supporting this view is reviewed from research on processing of language describing concrete and abstract concepts. The extant embodied theories that support either a strong or a moderate embodied view are then presented, as are the perspectives that define how the researchers discuss the role of sensory-motor grounding in language processing. The article concludes by discussing several lines of research that might help distinguish between various theoretical approaches and resolve some of the fundamental issues that fuel much of the debate in the field.
Words whose articulation resembles ingestion movements are preferred to words mimicking expectoration movements. This so-called in-out effect, suggesting that the oral movements caused by consonantal ...articulation automatically activate concordant motivational states, was already replicated in languages belonging to Germanic (e.g., German and English) and Italic (e.g., Portuguese) branches of the Indo-European family. However, it remains unknown whether such preference extends to the Indo-European branches whose writing system is based on the Cyrillic rather than Latin alphabet (e.g., Ukrainian), or whether it occurs in languages not belonging to the Indo-European family (e.g., Turkish). We replicated the in-out effect in two high-powered experiments (
= 274), with Ukrainian and Turkish native speakers, further supporting an embodied explanation for this intriguing preference.
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