Authors
Anita Körner
Mauricio Castillo
Linda Drijvers
Martin H Fischer
Fritz Günther
Marco Marelli
Olesia Platonova
Luca Rinaldi
Samuel Shaki
James P Trujillo
Oksana Tsaregorodtseva
Arthur M Glenberg
Date (dd-mm-yyyy)
2023
Title
Embodied Processing at Six Linguistic Granularity Levels
Subtitle
A Consensus Paper
Journal
Journal of Cognition
Volume
6
Publication Year
2023
Pages
60
Issue number
1
Document type
Article
Abstract

Language processing is influenced by sensorimotor experiences. Here, we review behavioral evidence for embodied and grounded influences in language processing across six linguistic levels of granularity. We examine (a) sub-word features, discussing grounded influences on iconicity (systematic associations between word form and meaning); (b) words, discussing boundary conditions and generalizations for the simulation of color, sensory modality, and spatial position; (c) sentences, discussing boundary conditions and applications of action direction simulation; (d) texts, discussing how the teaching of simulation can improve comprehension in beginning readers; (e) conversations, discussing how multi-modal cues improve turn taking and alignment; and (f) text corpora, discussing how distributional semantic models can reveal how grounded and embodied knowledge is encoded in texts. These approaches are converging on a convincing account of the psychology of language, but at the same time, there are important criticisms of the embodied approach and of specific experimental paradigms. The surest way forward requires the adoption of a wide array of scientific methods. By providing complimentary evidence, a combination of multiple methods on various levels of granularity can help us gain a more complete understanding of the role of embodiment and grounding in language processing.

URL
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Note
Copyright: © 2023 The Author(s).
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https://hdl.handle.net/11245.1/de4432d1-9a55-4c30-82c7-6eb850a8709f