Abstract
Previous neuroimaging studies suggested an involvement of sensory-motor brain systems during conceptual processing in support of grounded cognition theories of conceptual memory. However, in these studies with visible stimuli, contributions of strategic imagery or semantic elaboration processes to observed sensory-motor activity cannot be entirely excluded. In the present study, we therefore investigated the electrophysiological correlates of unconscious feature-specific priming of action- and sound-related concepts within a novel feature-priming paradigm to specifically probe automatic processing of conceptual features without the contribution of possibly confounding factors such as orthographic similarity or response congruency. Participants were presented with a masked subliminal prime word and a subsequent visible target word. In the feature-priming conditions primes as well as targets belonged to the same conceptual feature dimension (action or sound, e.g., typewriter or radio) whereas in the two non-priming conditions, either the primes or the targets consisted of matched control words with low feature relevance (e.g., butterfly or candle). Event-related potential analyses revealed unconscious feature-specific priming effects at fronto-central electrodes within 100 to 180 ms after target stimulus onset that differed with regard to topography and underlying neural generators. In congruency with previous findings under visible stimulation conditions, these differential subliminal ERP feature-priming effects demonstrate an unconscious automatic access to action versus sound features of concepts. The present results therefore support grounded cognition theory suggesting that activity in sensory and motor areas during conceptual processing can also occur unconsciously and is not mandatorily accompanied by a vivid conscious experience of the conceptual content such as in imagery.
Highlights
Concepts stored in human semantic long-term memory [1] provide the cognitive basis for language, action planning and thought [2,3] because they code the meaning of objects, events and abstract ideas
In the present event related potential (ERP) study we investigated for the first time unconscious automatic processing of action- and sound-related concepts within a masked feature-priming paradigm
This paradigm tested the prediction of grounded cognition theory whether pre-activation of the conceptual action versus sound feature dimension by an unconscious prime word differentially modulates subsequent processing of a target word denoting a concept with high relevance of the same feature dimension, respectively
Summary
Concepts stored in human semantic long-term memory [1] provide the cognitive basis for language, action planning and thought [2,3] because they code the meaning of objects, events and abstract ideas. In the present ERP study, we use a novel featurepriming paradigm in order to test whether unconscious activation of a given feature dimension by a prime suffices to elicit priming on a target concept that exhibits a high relevance of the same feature dimension, but is otherwise not related to the prime with respect to global semantic association as well as to orthographic, phonological or response similarity This feature-priming paradigm has the advantage over previous approaches to study (subliminal) conceptual feature-specific processing while such possibly confounding factors which may contribute to priming in repetition or response priming paradigms can be ruled out. As predicted by grounded cognition theories of conceptual memory, such a differential pattern of ERP feature-priming effects evoked solely by subliminal pre-activation of the same feature dimension would substantially support a differential automatic activation of conceptual action and sound features independent of strategic imagery or semantic elaboration processes Pattern would be, difficult to reconcile with amodal theories
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