Mental simulation theories of language comprehension propose that people automatically create mental representations of objects mentioned in sentences. Mental representation is often measured with the sentence-picture verification task, wherein …
Research has suggested that conceptual processing depends on both language-based and vision-based information. We tested this interplay at three levels of the experimental structure: individuals, words and tasks. To this end, we drew on three …
Research has suggested that conceptual processing depends on both language-based and sensorimotor information. In this thesis, I investigate the nature of these systems and their interplay at three levels of the experimental structure---namely, …
Throughout the 1990s, two opposing theories were used to explain how people understand texts, later bridged by the Landscape Model of reading (van den Broek, Young, Tzeng, & Linderholm, 1999). A review is offered below, including a schematic representation of the Landscape Model.
Memory-based view
The memory-based view presented reading as an autonomous, unconscious, effortless process. Readers were purported to achieve an understanding of a text as a whole by combining the concepts, and implications readily afforded, in the text with their own background knowledge (Myers & O’Brien, 1998; O’Brien & Myers, 1999).
We tested whether conceptual processing is modality-specific by tracking the time course of the Conceptual Modality Switch effect. Forty-six participants verified the relation between property words and concept words. The conceptual modality of …
The engagement of sensory brain regions during word recognition is widely documented, yet its precise relevance is less clear. It would constitute perceptual simulation only if it has a functional role in conceptual processing. We investigated this …
Research has extensively investigated whether conceptual processing is modality-specific—that is, whether meaning is processed to a large extent on the basis of perceptual and motor affordances (Barsalou, 2016). This possibility challenges long-established theories. It suggests a strong link between physical experience and language which is not borne out of the paradigmatic arbitrariness of words (see Lockwood, Dingemanse, & Hagoort, 2016). Modality-specificity also clashes with models of language that have no link to sensory and motor systems (Barsalou, 2016).
We tested whether conceptual processing is modality-specific by tracking the time course of the Conceptual Modality Switch effect. Forty-six participants verified the relation between property words and concept words. The conceptual modality of consecutive trials was manipulated in order to produce an Auditory-to-visual switch condition, a Haptic-to-visual switch condition, and a Visual-to-visual, no-switch condition. Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) were time-locked to the onset of the first word (property) in the target trials so as to measure the effect online and to avoid a within-trial confound. A switch effect was found, characterized by more negative ERP amplitudes for modality switches than no-switches. It proved significant in four typical time windows from 160 to 750 milliseconds post word onset, with greater strength in the Slow group, in posterior brain regions, and in the N400 window. The earliest switch effect was located in the language brain region, whereas later it was more prominent in the visual region. In the N400 and Late Positive windows, the Quick group presented the effect especially in the language region, whereas the Slow had it rather in the visual region. These results suggest that contextual factors such as time resources modulate the engagement of linguistic and embodied systems in conceptual processing.