Motion verbs and memory for motion events

ABSTRACT

Language is assumed to affect memory by offering an additional medium of encoding visual stimuli. Given that natural languages differ, cross-linguistic differences might impact memory processes. We investigate the role of motion verbs on memory for motion events in speakers of English, which preferentially encodes manner in motion verbs (e.g., driving), and Greek, which tends to encode path of motion in verbs (e.g., entering). Participants viewed a series of motion events and we later assessed their memory of the path and manner of the original events. There were no effects of language-specific biases on memory when participants watched events in silence; both English and Greek speakers remembered paths better than manners of motion. Moreover, even when motion verbs were available (either produced by or heard by the participants), they affected memory similarly regardless of the participants’ language: path verbs attenuated memory for manners of motion, but the reverse did not occur. We conclude that overt language affects motion memory, but these effects interact with underlying, shared biases in how viewers represent motion events.

KEYWORDS:

• Memory
• motion events
• motion verbs
• path and manner
• Greek

Acknowledgements

The first author would like to thank Myrto Grigoroglou for helpful discussion on statistical analyses.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors .

Notes

1 On a different instantiation of this hypothesis, single verbs should exert their influence on memory not only as a function of whether they encode path or manner but also as a result of how representative they are of motion encoding in the language. On this version, for instance, manner verbs should be less likely to decrease memory for visual paths in English compared to Greek speakers because in satellite-framed but not verb-framed languages use of manner verbs typically goes hand in hand with path information encoded in adpositional phrases (“crawl into the tent”). We will not discuss this possibility further because it does not connect well with prior literature on lexical effects on memory. However, the data from the present experiments bear on this hypothesis too, and the conclusions we will draw about whether lexicalization differences affect memory apply to this version as well.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by grant #R01HD055498 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to A. Papafragou and J. Trueswell. At that time, the first, second and last author were at the University of Delaware.