LINGUISTIC DESCRIPTIONS OF ACTION AND OBJECT PERCEPTION: THE ROLE OF REPEATED ACTION

Abstract

Does hearing a story about performing an action activate corresponding motor representations? If so, can linguistically-activated motor representations affect our visual experience of the world? The present study tested whether hearing a story about performing power or precision grasps would cause people to perceive an ambiguous object in a grasp-congruent manner. Participants listened to a story in which they tossed water balloons either without touching the knots of the balloons (power grasp condition) or by only touching the knots of the balloons (precision grasp condition). Afterward, participants interpreted an object that could either be seen as an apple (requires power grasp) or a cherry (requires precision grasp). Previous work on viewing action would predict a congruency effect in this experiment: after hearing about a power grasp, people would be more likely to perceive the object as an apple, whereas after hearing about a precision grasp, people would be more likely to perceive the object as a cherry (Dils, Flusberg, & Boroditsky, 2012). However, there was no effect of hearing stories that described grasping on object perception in the present study. This research sheds light on the relationships between action, perception, and language comprehension.