Motor resonance and linguistic focus

Abstract

Previous studies have demonstrated that verbal descriptions of actions activate compatible motor responses (Glenberg & Kaschak, 2002; Zwaan & Taylor, 2006). The present study replicates previous findings showing that, within a sentence, such activation is localized on the verb that denotes the action. Moreover, motor resonance is found to yield to linguistic focus. If a postverbal adverb maintains focus on a matching action (“slowly” or “quickly”), motor resonance occurs, but if the adverb shifts the focus to the agent (e.g., “obediently” or “eagerly”), a cessation of motor resonance ensues. These findings are discussed within the context of theories of motor resonance, action understanding, mental simulation, and linguistic focus.

Keywords:

• Motor resonance
• Mental simulation
• Embodied cognition
• Action
• Language comprehension

Acknowledgments

We thank Christine de Jesus, Quanne Coombs, and Helena Yardley for assistance with data collection. This research was supported by Grants MH-63972 from the National Institutes of Health and BCS-0446637 from the National Science Foundation.