Constructing meaning for up and down situated sentences: Is a sentence more than the sum of its words?

Abstract

abstractThe present study was concerned with the question whether comprehension is based on mental simulation processes beyond the word level. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with coherent sentence pairs, consisting of a context sentence and a target sentence. Target sentences ended with a word referring to an entity with a typical location in the upper vertical space (e.g., bird in There she sees a bird). Context sentences either supported the target entity’s typical location or not (Anna looks to the sky vs. Anna looks to the ground, respectively). Participants responded to the final word of the sentence pair by pressing an up- or a down-key. The results showed a main effect of response direction (faster up compared to down responses) as well as an interaction between context location and response direction. In Experiment 2, participants were presented with incoherent sentence pairs with the same context sentences and different target sentences (whereby the target word was kept identical), but in an incoherent manner (target sentence: On the poster one sees a bird). Here, the results showed a main effect of response direction but no interaction. The same result was obtained in Experiment 3, in which participants were presented with word pairs consisting of an up- or down-context word (e.g., sky vs. ground) and an up-target word (e.g., bird). Overall, the results provide evidence for the view that comprehension involves simulation processes at the word level as well as simulation processes at the sentence or discourse level.