Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T05:20:13.587Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Language comprehenders represent object distance both visually and auditorily

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2014

Bodo Winter  and
Benjamin Bergen
Bodo Winter*
Affiliation:
University of California, Merced
Benjamin Bergen
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
*
Correspondence addresses: Bodo Winter, Department of Cognitive and Information Sciences, University of California at Merced, 5200 North Lake Road, Merced, CA 95343, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

When they process sentences, language comprehenders activate perceptual and motor representations of described scenes. On the “immersed experiencer” account, comprehenders engage motor and perceptual systems to create experiences that someone participating in the described scene would have. We tested two predictions of this view. First, the distance of mentioned objects from the protagonist of a described scene should produce perceptual correlates in mental simulations. And second, mental simulation of perceptual features should be multimodal, like actual perception of such features. In Experiment 1, we found that language about objects at different distances modulated the size of visually simulated objects. In Experiment 2, we found a similar effect for volume in the auditory modality. These experiments lend support to the view that language-driven mental simulation encodes experiencer-specific spatial details. The fact that we obtained similar simulation effects for two different modalities—audition and vision—confirms the multimodal nature of mental simulations during language understanding.

Keywords

embodied cognitionmental simulationlanguage comprehensiondistanceimmersed experiencer
Type
Research Article
Information
Language and Cognition , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , March 2012 , pp. 1 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © UK Cognitive Linguistics Association 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barnett, V. & Lewis, T.. 1978. Outliers in statistical data. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Barsalou, L. W. 2002. Being there conceptually: Simulating categories in preparation for situated action. In Stein, N. L., Bauer, P. J. & Rabinowitz, M. (eds.), Representation, memory, and development: Essays in honor of Jean Mandler, 1–15. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Barsalou, L. W. 2008. Grounded cognition. Annual Review of Psychology 59. 617–645.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barsalou, L. W. 2009. Simulation, situated conceptualization, and prediction. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 364. 1281–1289.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barsalou, L. W., Santos, A., Simmons, W. K. & Wilson, C. D.. 2008. Language and simulation in conceptual processing. In Vega, M. De, Glenberg, A. M. & Graesser, A. C. (eds.), Symbols, embodiment, and meaning, 245–283. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bergen, B. 2007. Experimental methods for simulation semantics. In Gonzalez-Marquez, M., Mittelberg, I., Coulson, S. & Spivey, M. J. (eds.), Methods in cognitive linguistics, 277–301. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bergen, B., Lindsay, S., Matlock, T. & Narayanan, S.. 2007. Spatial and linguistic aspects of visual imagery in sentence comprehension. Cognitive Science 31. 733–764.Google Scholar
Bergen, B. & Wheeler, K.. 2005. Sentence understanding engages motor processes. Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 238–243.Google Scholar
Bergen, B. & Wheeler, K.. 2010. Grammatical aspect and mental simulation. Brain and Language 112(3). 150–158.Google Scholar
Coleman, P. D. 1968. Dual role of frequency spectrum in determination of auditory distance. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 44(2). 631–632.Google Scholar
Boersma, P. & Weenink, D.. 2009. Praat: Doing phonetics by computer (Version 5.1.05) [Computer program]. Retrieved March 9, 2010, from http://www.praat.org/.Google Scholar
Borghi, A. M., Glenberg, A. M. & Kaschak, M. P.. 2004. Putting words in perspective. Memory and Cognition 32. 863–873.Google Scholar
Brunyé, T. T., Ditman, T., Mahoney, C. R., Augustyn, J. S. & Taylor, H. A.. 2009. When you and I share perspectives: Pronouns modulate perspective-taking during narrative comprehension. Psychological Science 20. 27–32.Google Scholar
van Danzig, S., Pecher, D., Zeelenberg, R. & Barsalou, L. W.. 2008. Perceptual processing affects conceptual processing. Cognitive Science 32. 579–590.Google Scholar
Ditman, T., Bruny, T. T.é, Mahoney, C. R. & Taylor, H. A.. 2010. Simulating an enactment effect: Pronouns guide action simulation during narrative comprehension. Cognition 115. 172–178.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Glenberg, A. M. & Kaschak, M. P.. 2002. Grounding language in action. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 9(3). 558–565.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Glenberg, A. M. & Robertson, D. A.. 2000. Symbol grounding and meaning: A comparison of high-dimensional and embodied theories of meaning. Journal of Memory and Language 43(3). 379–401.Google Scholar
Haber, R. N. & Levin, C. A.. 2001. The independence of size perception and distance perception. Perception and Psychophysics 63(7). 1140–1152.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Horton, W. S. & Rapp, D. N.. 2003. Out of sight, out of mind: Occlusion and the accesibility of information in narrative comprehension. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 10(1). 104–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingard, U. 1953. A review of the influence of meteorological conditions on sound propagation. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 25. 405–411.Google Scholar
Kaschak, M. P., Madden, C. J., Therriault, D. J., Yaxley, R. H., Aveyard, M. E., Blanchard, A. A. & Zwaan, R. A.. 2005. Perception of motion affects language processing. Cognition 94. B79–B89.Google Scholar
Kaschak, M. P., Zwaan, R. A., Aveyard, M. E. & Yaxley, R. H.. 2006. Perception of auditory motion affects language processing. Cognitive Science 30. 733–744.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kosslyn, S. M., Ganis, G. & Thompson, W. L.. 2001. Neural foundations of imagery. Nature Neuroscience Reviews 2. 635–642.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mahon, B. Z. & Caramazza, A.. 2008. A critical look at the embodied cognition hypothesis and a new proposal for grounding conceptual content. Journal of Physiology - Paris 102. 59–70.Google Scholar
Morrow, D. G., Greenspan, S. L. & Bower, G. H.. 1987. Accessibility and situation models in narrative comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language 26. 165–187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pecher, D., van Dantzig, S., Zwaan, R. A. & Zeelenberg, R., R., 2009. Language comprehenders retain implied shape and orientation of objects. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 62. 1108–1114.Google Scholar
Schneider, W., Eschman, A. & Zuccolotto, A.. 2002. E-Prime reference guide. Pittsburgh, PA: Psychology Software Tools, Inc.Google Scholar
Sereno, S. C., O'Donnell, P. J. & Sereno, M. E.. 2009. Size matters: Bigger is faster. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 62(6). 1115–1122.Google Scholar
Stanfield, R. A. & Zwaan, R. A.. 2001. The effect of implied orientation derived from verbal context on picture recognition. Psychological Science 12. 153–156.Google Scholar
Sugg, M. J. & Polich, J.. 1995. P300 from auditory stimuli: intensity and frequency effects. Journal of Biological Psychology 41(3). 255–269.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Taylor, L. J. & Zwaan, R. A.. 2009. Action in cognition: The case of language. Language and Cognition 1. 45–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vermeulen, N., Corneille, O. & Niedenthal, P. M.. 2008. Sensory load incurs conceptual processing costs. Cognition 109. 287–294.Google Scholar
Vuilleumier, P., Henson, R. N., Driver, J. & Dolan, R. J.. 2002. Multiple levels of visual object constancy revealed by event-related fMRI of repetition priming. Nature Neuroscience 5. 491–499.Google Scholar
Wheeler, K. & Bergen, B.. 2010. Meaning in the palm of your hand. In Rice, S. & Newman, J. (eds.), Empirical and experimental methods in conceptual structure, discourse, and language, 150–158. Stanford: CSLI.Google Scholar
Woodworth, R. S. & Schlosberg, H.. 1954. Experimental psychology. New York: Holt.Google Scholar
Yaxley, R. H. & Zwaan, R. A.. 2007. Simulating visibility during language comprehension. Cognition 105(1). 229–236.Google Scholar
Zahorik, P. 2002. Assessing auditory distance perception using virtual acoustics. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 111(4). 1832–1846.Google Scholar
Zwaan, R. A. 2004. The immersed experiencer: Toward an embodied theory of language comprehension. In Ross, B. H. (ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 44), 35–62. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Zwaan, R. A. & Radvansky, G. A.. 1998. Situation models in language comprehension and memory. Psychological Bulletin 123(2). 162–185.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zwaan, R. A., Stanfield, R. A. & Yaxley, R. H.. 2002. Language comprehenders mentally represent the shapes of objects. Psychological Science 13. 168–171.Google Scholar