Body-object interaction (BOI) measures people's perceptions of the ease with which a human body can physically interact with a word's referent. Facilitatory BOI effects, involving faster responses for high BOI words, have been reported in a number of visual word recognition tasks using button press responses. Since BOI effects have only been observed in button-press tasks, it is possible that the effects may be due to priming by high BOI words of the motor system, rather than activation of stored motor information in the lexical semantic system. If this hypothesis is correct, BOI effects should not be observed in tasks using verbal responses. We tested this hypothesis in three versions of a go/no-go semantic categorization task: one version required button press responses, whereas the other two versions required verbal responses. Contrary to the motor priming hypothesis, we observed facilitatory BOI effects in all three versions of the semantic categorization task. These results support the inference that stored motor information is indeed an important component of the lexical semantic system.

The present research examines the effects of body-object interaction (BOI) on eye gaze behaviour in a reading task. BOI measures perceptions of the ease with which a human body can physically interact with a word's referent. A set of high BOI words (e.g. cat) and a set of low BOI words (e.g. sun) were selected, matched on imageability and concreteness (as well as other lexical and semantic variables). Facilitatory BOI effects were observed: gaze durations and total fixation durations were shorter for high BOI words, and participants made fewer regressions to high BOI words. The results provide evidence of a BOI effect on non-manual responses and in a situation that taps normal reading processes. We discuss how the results (a) suggest that stored motor information (as measured by BOI ratings) is relevant to lexical semantics, and (b) are consistent with an embodied view of cognition (Wilson 2002).