Abstract
Despite the impressive amount of evidence showing involvement of the sensorimotor systems in language processing, important questions remain unsolved among which the relationship between non-literal uses of language and sensorimotor activation. The literature did not yet provide a univocal answer on whether the comprehension of non-literal, abstract motion sentences engages the same neural networks recruited for literal sentences. A previous TMS study using the same experimental materials of the present study showed activation for literal, fictive and metaphoric motion sentences but not for idiomatic ones. To evaluate whether this may depend on insufficient time for elaborating the idiomatic meaning, we conducted a behavioral experiment that used a sensibility judgment task performed by pressing a button either with a hand finger or with a foot. Motor activation is known to be sensitive to the action-congruency of the effector used for responding. Therefore, all other things being equal, significant differences between response emitted with an action-congruent or incongruent effector (foot vs. hand) may be attributed to motor activation. Foot-related action verbs were embedded in sentences conveying literal motion, fictive motion, metaphoric motion or idiomatic motion. Mental sentences were employed as a control condition. foot responses were significantly faster than finger responses but only in literal motion sentences. We hypothesize that motor activation may arise in early phases of comprehension processes (i.e., upon reading the verb) for then decaying as a function of the strength of the semantic motion component of the verb.
Highlights
A consistent bulk of evidence showed that the motor schemata associated with action words are embedded in the corresponding cortical representations
In the present study we further explored the presence of motor activation in the comprehension of literal and non-literal sentences containing motion verbs
There were four types of sentence for each of the 28 motion verb: (1) Literal motion sentences (e.g., The man runs in the beautiful country); (2) Metaphorical motion sentences (e.g., The woman runs with her fantasy often); (3) Idiomatic motion sentences (e.g., Between the neighbors runs bad blood); (4) Fictive motion sentences (e.g., The road runs along the impetuous river)
Summary
A consistent bulk of evidence showed that the motor schemata associated with action words are embedded in the corresponding cortical representations (for overviews, see Mahon and Caramazza, 2005, 2008; Pulvermüller, 2005; Willems and Hagoort, 2007; Kemmerer and Gonzalez-Castillo, 2010). Despite the impressive, and hard to summarize, amount of studies that favors the composite Embodied and Grounded Cognition approach (for overviews, see Mahon and Caramazza, 2005, 2008; Borghi and Cimatti, 2010; Pulvermüller and Fadiga, 2010; Weiskopf, 2010; Dove, 2011; Willems and Casasanto, 2011) important questions remain unsolved It is still disputed whether motor activation arises in early phases of language comprehension (Pulvermüller, 2005; Zwaan and Taylor, 2006; Kaschak and Borreggine, 2008; Boulenger et al, 2012), due to automatic activation of the same neural circuitry for action and language-mediated action simulation, or later on (Boulenger et al, 2009; Papeo et al, 2009) reflecting late merging of information pertaining to the semantic and action systems (Mahon and Caramazza, 2008). When someone says The employee runs the risk of being fired, or The rumor flew across town, it is evident that she did not refer to concrete actions
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