When words are upside down: Language–space associations in children and adults

Abstract

The nonlinguistic sensorimotor experiences and contexts that accompany language learning are often assumed to play an integral role in meaning representation. However, despite embodied models of language comprehension being well established in the literature, evidence is mainly derived from adult studies. For example, it has been shown that for adult comprehenders there is a close link between language and space, resulting in automatic reactivation of a referent’s spatial location during word processing. In the current study, we investigated whether this link can also be found in young children (4;8–7;5 years;months). In a Stroop-like paradigm, our participants responded to a colored circle on the screen with an upward or downward arm movement after auditorily perceiving a task-irrelevant noun. We chose noun’s with referents that are typically located either in upper or lower space (e.g., “sun” vs. “shoe”). Although it was not necessary to process the meaning of the nouns in order to fulfill the task, we found a spatial compatibility effect that was similar to language–space associations previously reported for adult participants. We conclude that sensorimotor experiences in the spatial domain seem to play a role during meaning processing from early childhood onward, a finding crucial for embodied models of language comprehension.