Embodied Simulations Are Modulated by Sentential Perspective

Abstract

There is considerable evidence that language comprehenders derive lexical-semantic meaning by mentally simulating perceptual and motor attributes of described events. However, the nature of these simulations-including the level of detail that is incorporated and contexts under which simulations occur-is not well understood. Here, we examine the effects of first- versus third-person perspective on mental simulations during sentence comprehension. First-person sentences describing physical transfer towards or away from the body (e.g., "You threw the microphone," "You caught the microphone") modulated response latencies when responses were made along a front-back axis, consistent with the action-sentence compatibility effect (ACE). This effect was not observed for third-person sentences ("He threw the microphone," "He caught the microphone"). The ACE was observed when making responses along a left-right axis for third-person, but not first-person sentences. Abstract sentences (e.g., "He heard the message") did not show an ACE along either axis. These results show that perspective is a detail that is simulated during action sentence comprehension, and that motoric activations are flexible and affected by the pronominal perspective used in the sentence.