Casasanto, D. & Lozano, S. (2007). Meaning and Motor Action. Proceedings of 29th Annual Conference of the
Cognitive Science Society (pp. 149-154). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Meaning and Motor Action
Daniel Casasanto
([email protected])
Sandra Lozano
([email protected])
Department of Psychology, Stanford University
Jordan Hall, Bldg. 420, Stanford, CA 94043
Abstract
Two experiments investigated relations between manual
motor actions and the meanings of abstract words. In
Experiment 1, participants told stories with literal or
metaphorical spatial content while moving marbles from one
box to another continually, in a specified direction (i.e., up,
down, right, or left). Although marble movements were
irrelevant to storytelling they influenced verbal fluency
dramatically, increasing fluency relative to baseline when the
direction of movement was congruent with the spatial schema
implied by the accompanying speech (e.g., upward movement
during ‘the temperature went up’ or ‘my grades got better’),
and decreasing verbal fluency when movement was
incongruent with speech (e.g., upward movement during ‘my
teams rank fell’ or ‘the price got cheaper’).
Experiment 2 showed complementary ‘motor-meaning
congruity’ effects in a non-communicative setting.
Participants performed a marble moving task while
incidentally reading irrelevant abstract words.
Marble
movements were fastest when the direction of movement was
congruent with the spatial schema implied by the word (e.g.,
upward for genius; downward for gloomy). Furthermore,
motor-meaning congruity during word presentation strongly
predicted subsequent memory for incidentally encoded words.
Together, these motor-meaning congruity effects suggest that
motor representations play a role in instantiating abstract
concepts that transcends any role they may play in
communicating these concepts.
Keywords: Metaphor; Motor-Meaning Congruity Effect;
Gesture; Space; Embodied Cognition.
Introduction
Metaphor and Embodiment
Abstract concepts like time, truth, or value present a
challenge for any ‘embodied’ theory according to which
thoughts are perceptual simulations: how can we
perceptually simulate things we can never perceive?
Cognitive Linguists offer a potential answer. According to
Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999),
linguistic metaphors (e.g., a long time, a high grade, a deep
thought) show that many of our abstract ideas are structured
in terms of a few simpler concepts grounded directly in
perceptuo-motor experience (e.g., experience with physical
motion, force, and space). This idea is supported by an
impressive body of linguistic theory and data (e.g., Clark,
1973; Jackendoff, 1983; Sweetser, 1991; Talmy, 1988), and
more recently, by a growing body of experimental
psychological data (e.g., Boroditsky, 2000; Casasanto &
Boroditsky, In Press; Casasanto & Lozano, 2006; Meier &
Robinson, 2004; Torralbo, Santiago, & Lupiáñez, 2006).
Within Cognitive Linguistics, Embodiment Theory and
Conceptual Metaphor Theory are assumed to be mutually
inextricable (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). Yet, ‘embodied
cognition’ researchers in other subfields of Cognitive
Science have marginalized the role of metaphor in the
mental representation of abstract concepts (e.g., Barsalou,
1999; Barsalou & Wiemer-Hastings, 2005; Prinz, 2002).
Barsalou (1999), for example, argues that “a direct, nonmetaphorical representation of an abstract domain is
essential,” and proposes that “perceptual symbol systems
can represent all abstract concepts directly” (pg. 600). This
is somewhat surprising, as Conceptual Metaphor seems a
likely component of the solution to the problem of mentally
representing the imperceptible via perceptual simulations.
To the extent that perceptuo-motor schemas constitute the
content of abstract concepts, these concepts can be
instantiated by the same neural and mental structures that
simulate perception and action in the physical world.
Some skepticism about connections between Conceptual
Metaphor and Embodiment may be warranted, however,
because the first behavioral studies that explored links
between metaphor and motor action were difficult to
interpret. Glenberg & Kaschak (2002) tested Glenberg’s
Indexical Hypothesis, according to which language
understanding entails three processes: first, words are
mapped to perceptual symbols (Barsalou, 1999). Next,
physical affordances are derived from these symbols.
Following Gibson (1979), Glenberg & Kaschak define
affordances as “potential interactions between bodies and
objects” (pg. 558). Finally, physical affordances are
“meshed under the guidance of syntactic constructions” (pg.
559). The result is a cognitive simulation of the actions
described in language which, by hypothesis, requires
activation of the same neural structures that guide real
action. Glenberg & Kaschak found that participants were
fastest to decide that a sentence was sensible when their
response required a hand movement in the direction that was
implied by the sentence. This was true not only for
sentences describing “concrete transfer” (e.g., movement
away from the body following You give Liz the toy) but also
for sentences describing “abstract transfer” (e.g., movement
away from the body following You told Liz the story).
The latter result is frequently cited as evidence that
abstract concepts rely on cognitive simulations of physical
action (e.g., Barsalou & Wiemer-Hastings, 2005), yet this
conclusion should be treated as tentative, for at least two
Casasanto, D. & Lozano, S. (2007). Meaning and Motor Action. Proceedings of 29th Annual Conference of the
Cognitive Science Society (pp. 149-154). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
reasons. First, it is not clear how this outcome was
predicted by the Indexical Hypothesis (i.e., what are the
physical affordances of abstract entities, and how are they
perceptually simulated?) Second, it is not clear to what
extent the action congruity effect was driven by the abstract
words or concepts, per se, as opposed to the grammatical
constructions in which they were embedded. Glenberg &
Kaschak noted that their “abstract transfer” sentences were
“not far removed from literal action” (pg. 563). They
suggested that the action compatibility effect may have
arisen from the use of the double object construction for
both concrete and abstract transfer sentences. Since, as the
authors argue, constructions may carry meaning
independent of their particular constituents, these data
provide dubious support for the claim that abstract concepts
co-opt mental simulations of physical action.
In another study, Richardson, Spivey, Barsalou, & McRae
(2003) asked participants to listen to sentences containing
either concrete or abstract action verbs that implied motion
along either a horizontal or vertical axis (e.g., push or
respect) before performing a visual target discrimination
task. Participants were fastest to respond when the spatial
schema implied by the verb in sentence was incongruent
with the location of the visual target. In a second study,
however, participants were fastest to respond to a memory
probe when the orientation of the probe pictures was
congruent with the schema implied by the verb in sentence
heard during the encoding phase. The authors interpret both
the faster reaction times during schema-incongruent trials in
the first experiment and the slower reaction times during
schema-incongruent trials in the second experiment as
evidence that perceptuo-motor schemas are activated during
comprehension of concrete and abstract verbs.
This interpretation is not implausible, but it is
problematic. Richardson, et al. state correctly that based on
the literature on interactions between visual perception and
visual imagery, it is difficult to predict when imagistic
representations should facilitate perceptual processes and
when they should inhibit them. As such, if schemacongruity had been found to facilitate responding in
Experiment 1 (as was found in Experiment 2 and in
Glenberg & Kaschak’s study) then presumably this, too,
would have been interpreted as support for the experimental
hypothesis.
In short, there were three possible outcomes for these
experiments. Schema-congruity between the verb and the
visual display could have produced: 1. faster response times,
2. slower response times, or 3. no effect on response times.
The authors interpret both of these first two outcomes as
confirming the experimental hypothesis, and the third would
be uninterpretable, neither supporting nor disconfirming
their hypothesis. Since this study was not capable of
disconfirming the experimental hypothesis, it should be
interpreted cautiously as support for the claim that
perceptual representations underlie the meanings of concrete
and abstract words.
In the present experiments, we sought to address some of
the limitations of these previous experiments, and also to
expand the scope of inquiry in several ways. Whereas
previous studies have focused on activation of perceptuomotor schemas during language comprehension, Experiment
1 explored connections between action, concepts, and
language during speech production. Schema-congruity
effects of action on language production and of language
production on action were measured independently.
Experiment 2 tested whether spatio-motor schemas are
activated automatically, even when single words referring to
abstract concepts are read incidentally, in a noncommunicative setting.
Experiment 1: Moving Stories
Experiment 1 builds upon previous experiments examining
spontaneous gestures during storytelling (Casasanto &
Lozano, 2006). In one experiment, pairs of participants
took turns reading and retelling brief stories to one another.
Each participant retold three types of stories:
(1) Literal Spatial Language stories (LSL)
(e.g., my rocket went higher…)
(2) Metaphorical Spatial Language stories (MSL)
(e.g., my grades went higher…)
(3) Non-Spatial Language stories (NSL)
(e.g., my grades got better…)
Literal Spatial Language (LSL) stories described physical
objects and events oriented along either a horizontal or
vertical axis, and directed either upward, downward, right,
or left. Metaphorical Spatial Language (MSL) stories
described non-spatial phenomena that are nevertheless
commonly expressed using spatial metaphors implying both
orientation and direction (e.g., looking forward to the future;
the price went lower). Non-Spatial Language (NSL) stories
were identical to the MSL stories, except that all
metaphorical spatial language was replaced with non-spatial
language conveying nearly the same meaning (e.g.,
anticipating the future; the price got cheaper).
Although participants were not instructed to gesture, their
spontaneous gestures were overwhelmingly congruent with
the spatial schemas implied by the target phrases in the
stories they told. Overall, 87% of gestures matched our a
priori predictions about their orientations and directions
based on the spatial trajectories implied by the stories. This
was true not only in the Literal Spatial Language condition
(e.g., upward gesture accompanying “the rocket went
higher”), but also in the Metaphorical Spatial Language
condition (e.g., upward gesture accompanying “my grades
went higher”; rightward gesture accompanying “looking
forward to the future”), and critically in the Non-Spatial
Language condition, as well (e.g., upward gesture
accompanying “my grades got better”; rightward gesture
accompanying “anticipating the future”). Schema congruity
did not differ across conditions: even when participants used
no spatial language, their gestures revealed that they formed
spatio-motor representations corresponding to the abstract
ideas they expressed.
Casasanto, D. & Lozano, S. (2007). Meaning and Motor Action. Proceedings of 29th Annual Conference of the
Cognitive Science Society (pp. 149-154). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
A second study began investigating the functional
significance of these gestures. A new group of participants
told the same stories while holding down buttons on a
keyboard with both hands (supposedly to activate the left
and right microphone channels that recorded their voices).
Comparison of verbal disfluency between the first and
second groups showed that participants who were prevented
from gesturing produced disfluencies at a much higher rate
than participants who were allowed to gesture. This
increase was found during target clauses with literal and
metaphorical spatial content, but not during non-target
clauses with no spatial content, which served as a control.
Importantly, this effect did not differ across LSL, MSL, and
NSL conditions: gesture prevention led to similar increases
in disfluency for targets with literal and metaphorical spatial
content -- even when no spatial language was used.
The present experiment was designed to investigate why
speech with literal and metaphorical spatial content is more
fluent when speakers are allowed to gesture than when
they’re not, and to determine how effects of gesture
prevention on speech fluency inform theories of concepts
and word meaning. Broadly speaking, it is possible that
gestures could benefit speech production either because of
their semiotic function or because of their physical form. On
this first possibility, in Peirce’s (1960) terms both iconic and
metaphorical gestures can be considered to be
representamen that denote objects, in much the same way
that words do. An upward gesture can denote the concept of
rising in the sender’s mind (whether literal or metaphorical
rising) similarly to the way the words ‘rising’ or ‘going up’
can. It is possible that speakers describe spatial concepts
more fluently when gesturing because producing one
representamen (i.e., the gesture) facilitates production of
another representamen (i.e., the word or phrase) that denotes
the same object.
Alternatively, iconic and metaphorical gestures may
facilitate speech with spatial content because the motor
programs that generate directed hand and arm movements
also activate or reinforce the spatio-motoric schemas that
partly constitute concrete and abstract word meanings. If
so, then the ‘active ingredient’ in these gestures is motor
action, per se; speech is facilitated to the extent that the
motor programs underlying gestures reinforce the spatiomotor schemas underlying word meanings.
It is not possible to distinguish these alternatives based on
existing data: during free gesturing the semiotic function and
the physical form of gestures are conflated, and during
traditional gesture prevention experiments they are both
eliminated. Thus, we created a dual-task experiment to
distinguish effects of the semiotic and the purely motoric
components of gesture on speech production.
We
administered a version of the storytelling task described
above which prevented participants from making
meaningful gestures, but also forced them to execute
directed motor actions. While telling stories, participants
continually transferred marbles between pairs of boxes that
were stacked on top of one another and positioned on the
right and left of the computer screen in front of them.
Marble movements were timed by a metronome, and were
either congruent or incongruent with the spatial schemas
implied by the target ideas in the stories (e.g., ‘the price
went lower’). We compared the rate of verbal disfluencies
produced during target clauses accompanied by schema
congruent vs. schema incongruent marble movements.
Additionally, we planned comparisons between data from
the current experiment and data from previous experiments
in which the same stories were told under free gesturing and
traditional gesture prevention conditions.
Gestures are semiotic acts, but forced marble movements
are not. We reasoned that if the semiotic function of gesture
is responsible for the higher verbal fluency observed when
free gesturing is allowed, then speech disfluency results in
the present experiment should resemble those of the
traditional gesture prevention manipulation. Disfluency
should be approximately equal during congruent and
incongruent marble movements alike, because in both
conditions moving marbles to specified locations at
specified times prevents (or at least greatly impairs)
meaningful spontaneous gesturing.
By contrast, if the physical form of gestures promotes
verbal fluency, a very different pattern of results should be
found.
Schema congruent and incongruent marble
movements should have opposite effects on verbal fluency.
Schema incongruent marble movements should impair
verbal fluency, perhaps even more than gesture prevention
by button holding did, because incongruent movements
correspond to spatio-motor representations in the mind that
conflict with the spatio-motor schemas underlying target
word meanings. On the other hand, schema congruent
marble movements should promote verbal fluency. In fact,
this proposal -- that motor action, per se, is the active
ingredient in the cognitive function of gesture -- leads to a
rather counterintuitive prediction regarding fluency during
free gesturing vs. schema congruent marble moving.
During the free gesture task described earlier, participants
gestured spontaneously for 45% of target clauses. Most of
these gestures were schema congruent, so they produced
schema congruent hand movements during approximately
40% of target clauses, overall. The marble task, however,
forces participants to make schema congruent hand
movements during all (or nearly all) of the target clauses.
Therefore, participants should produce fewer verbal
disfluencies during schema congruent marble movements
than during free gesturing, despite the fact that continuous
marble moving imposes a potentially distracting secondary
task.
Methods
Materials and procedure
16 Stanford University
undergraduates were recruited in pairs, and participated in
exchange for course credit. Participants took turns telling
brief stories (50-100 words). Each story contained one of 3
types of language (Literal Spatial Language, Metaphorical
Spatial Language, or Non-Spatial Language, see examples
above), and the target items in each story implied motion or
Casasanto, D. & Lozano, S. (2007). Meaning and Motor Action. Proceedings of 29th Annual Conference of the
Cognitive Science Society (pp. 149-154). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Data coding and analysis Marble movements were
classified as either congruent with the spatial schema
implied by a target clause (correct axis and correct direction:
e.g., upward movement during a target clause implying
upward motion), incongruent (correct axis but incorrect
direction: e.g., upward movement during a target clause
implying downward motion ), or orthogonal (incorrect axis:
e.g., upward movement during target clauses implying
leftward motion). Due to space limitations, the analyses
reported here will focus on congruent and incongruent trials.
Participants’ video recordings were surveyed to make
sure they followed instructions. Their audio recordings
were transcribed and parsed into clauses that contained
target ideas (Target Clauses) and those that did not (NonTarget Clauses). Two independent coders determined
whether each clause contained a verbal disfluency, and
recorded the types of any disfluencies found (i.e., repeats,
repairs, fillers, and insertions). We computed the number of
Target Clauses and Non-Target Clauses that contained
disfluencies, and disfluency rates were compared for target
phrases accompanied by schema congruent and schema
incongruent marble movements. Inter-coder agreement
exceeded 99%. Finally, we computed the rate of success
with which participants executed schema congruent and
incongruent marble movements (i.e., delivered a marble to
the appropriate box, or dropped it while trying).
Results and Discussion
Overall, on average speakers produced disfluencies during
62% of target clauses accompanied by schema incongruent
marble movements, but only produced disfluencies during
1% of target clauses accompanied by schema congruent
marble movements (difference of means = 61%,
t(15)=33.50, p<.000001; Fig. 1 columns a and d).
Disfluency rates were nearly identical across all language
conditions, both for target clauses (MLSL=62%, MMSL=63%,
MNSL=62%) and for non-target clauses (MLSL=6%,
MMSL=6%, MNSL= 6%). Planned comparisons of these
results with results from previous experiments revealed that
disfluency rates for target clauses varied significantly as a
function of the presence or absence of gestures, and of the
congruity of the motor actions that accompanied storytelling
(F(3,84)=1277.64, p<.000001). Storytellers produced
disfluencies at a higher rate during schema incongruent
marble movements than during gesture prevention via
button holding (difference of means =.17, t(42)=36.76,
p<.000001; Fig. 1 columns a and b), and produced
disfluencies at a significantly lower rate during schema
congruent marble movements than during free gesturing
(difference of means = .08, t(42)=5.25, p<.00001; Fig. 1
columns c and d).
0.7
Disfluency rate
extension in one of 4 directions (upward, downward, right,
or left). After telling a warm-up story, each participant told
6 target stories: 2 LSL, 2 MSL, and 2 NSL. Each story
contained between 3 and 7 targets. The order of stories was
randomized, and content of stories was counterbalanced so
that each pair of participants received only one version of
each metaphorical story: either MSL or NSL (i.e., one pair
of Ss would receive the MSL story about ‘grades going
higher’, another pair of Ss would receive the minimally
paired NSL story about ‘grades getting better’). (For further
details regarding stories, see Casasanto & Lozano, 2006.)
The marble apparatus was constructed out of Xerox paper
boxes and packing tape. Participants told the stories while
transferring marbles with both hands between boxes that
were stacked on top of each other, and positioned on the
right and left of the computer screen in front of them. They
were instructed to deposit one marble with each hand into
the appropriate box at the instant that they heard a
metronome tick, once every 2000 ms (this rate was selected
after pilot Ss found they were unable to reliably complete
faster marble movements). Each pair of participants was
assigned to make either upward, downward, leftward, or
rightward movements, so their marble movements were
always in the same direction. Since each participant told
stories with target items implying motion or extension in all
four directions, marble movements were congruent with
some of their target clauses and incongruent with others.
Stories and marble directions were counterbalanced across
participants.
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
a.
b.
Incongruent ____No
movements
gesturing
c.
Free
gesturing
d.
Congruent
movements
Figure 1. Proportion of target clauses containing verbal
disfluencies under different storytelling conditions. Bars
indicate s.e.m.
Not only did marble movements affect participants’
ability to tell stories, but storytelling also affected their
ability to complete marble movements. Overall, participants
dropped 4% of the marbles they attempted to move. The
rate of marble dropping did not differ across language
conditions (MLSL=4%, MMSL=4%, MNSL= 4%). Strikingly,
all marble dropping occurred during target clauses
accompanied by schema incongruent marble movements. A
sign test showed that the total number of marbles dropped
during schema incongruent movements was significantly
greater than the number dropped during schema congruent
movements (45 vs. 0; p=5.86x10-14). When their hand
movements were incongruent with the literal or
metaphorical spatial content of their speech, our participants
were quite literally losing their marbles.
These results strongly support the proposal that motor
actions, per se, are the active ingredient in the cognitive
function of literal and metaphorical gestures, and suggest
that their physical form can influence speech fluency,
Casasanto, D. & Lozano, S. (2007). Meaning and Motor Action. Proceedings of 29th Annual Conference of the
Cognitive Science Society (pp. 149-154). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Experiment 2: Marbles, Metaphor, & Meaning
Experiment 1 showed that metaphorical gestures – and even
directed motor actions with no semiotic value – facilitated
speech about abstract concepts. This was true even when
the target words had no literal spatial meaning (e.g., better,
hotter), supporting the claim that the abstract concepts these
words refer to are partly constituted by spatio-motor image
schemas. Yet, on a skeptical interpretation, these results
only show that motor actions influence the kinds of mental
representations people form for the purpose of
communicating (i.e., they influence the process Slobin
(1987) called thinking for speaking). Experiment 2 tested
whether motor actions play a role in accessing or
constituting abstract word meanings more generally, even in
non-communicative contexts.
In another ‘motor-meaning congruity’ task, participants
incidentally read abstract words referring to metaphorically
spatialized concepts while moving marbles into boxes
positioned so as to require schema congruent or incongruent
motor actions. We reasoned that if spatio-motor schemas
are automatically activated when people see abstract words
– even if they’re not planning to speak the words or
communicate their content, and even if their meaning is
irrelevant to the task – then schema congruity should
facilitate the marble movements themselves (an on-line
effect), and should also facilitate subsequent memory for the
stimulus words (an off-line effect).
schema-congruent (e.g., if the word wealthy appeared in
blue and the blue box was on top) while the other half were
schema-incongruent (e.g., if the word wealthy appeared in
red and the red box was on bottom). Word order was
randomized, and the assignment of font colors to words was
counterbalanced across subjects. A video camera placed
behind the participant recorded their marble movements.
The color of the words was their only attribute that was
relevant for performing the marble task. Participants were
not instructed to read or remember the words. After
completing the marble moving task, they performed a
surprise old/new recognition memory task during which all
words presented previously as cues for marble movements
were presented again in black font, randomly intermixed
with an equal number of distractor words matched with
targets for length, frequency, valence, and concreteness.
Results and Discussion
Participants were dramatically faster to make schema
congruent marble movements than schema incongruent
marble movements, both when analyzed by subjects
(difference of means = 308 ms, t(17)=13.50, p<.000000001;
Fig. 2a) and by items (difference of means = 304 ms,
t(94)=14.00, p<.00000001). We found an equally dramatic
effect of schema congruity on recognition memory. On
average, participants correctly recognized 94% of words
incidentally encoded during schema congruent marble
movements, but were at chance recognizing words encoded
during schema incongruent movements (54% correct
recognition; difference of means = 0.40, t(17)=10.99,
p<.000000001; Fig. 2b). Finally, even though participants
were only required to process stimulus words superficially
according to their font color, words that required schema
incongruent movements caused participants to lose their
marbles significantly more often than words that required
schema congruent movements (12 vs. 1, p<.003).
Materials and Procedure 18 Stanford University students
participated in exchange for course credit. Individual
participants were seated in front of a computer screen.
Stacked next to the screen on both the right and left there
were three large boxes. The top box was red, and the
bottom box was blue (or vice versa, counterbalanced across
subjects). The middle box was white, and was filled with
hundreds of marbles. 48 words appeared briefly (2000 ms)
in the center of the computer screen, one at a time, in either
blue or red font. The words were nouns and adjectives
referring to abstract entities that have no spatial instantiation
in the world, but which are often associated with vertical
spatial metaphors (e.g., wealthy, poor, virtuous, evil, joy,
disgust, etc.), and which subjects in a previous norming
study spatialized accordingly (e.g., placing wealthy above
poor, virtuous above evil, etc.) Participants were instructed
that as soon as each word appeared, they should move one
marble with each hand into the box corresponding to the
color of the word’s font, as quickly as possible. Unknown
to the participants, half of their marble movements were
Marble movement time (msec)
Methods
1300
1
Percent correct word recognition
independent of any semiotic function. Additionally, these
data show that congruity effects between motor action and
word meaning extend beyond language comprehension to
language production. Furthermore, influences of language
and action are bidirectional: using language with literal or
metaphorical spatial content influences the execution of
simple, irrelevant motor actions – and vice versa.
1250
1200
1150
1100
1050
1000
950
900
Congruent
movement
Incongruent
movement
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
Congruent
movement
Incongruent
movement
Figure 2. Experiment 2 results. 2a (left) Time to make
schema congruent and schema incongruent marble
movements. 2b. (right) Correct recognition for words seen
during schema congruent and schema incongruent marble
movements (chance performance = 50%). Bars indicate
s.e.m.
Experiment 2 provides novel evidence for the automatic
activation of spatio-motoric image schemas underlying the
meanings of abstract words. The interactions of motor
Casasanto, D. & Lozano, S. (2007). Meaning and Motor Action. Proceedings of 29th Annual Conference of the
Cognitive Science Society (pp. 149-154). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
action and language that we observed in Experiment 1 are
not restricted to communicative contexts; the relationship
between meaning and motor action extends beyond thinking
for speaking.
no theory of abstract concepts -- embodied or otherwise -will be complete unless it predicts the kind of relations
between meaning and motor action that we demonstrate
here.
General Discussion and Conclusions
Acknowledgements
Despite the close association between Conceptual Metaphor
and Embodiment Theory in the Cognitive Linguistics
literature, embodied cognition researchers in other areas of
Cognitive Science have pursued alternative accounts of how
abstract concepts are structured, and of how they might be
implemented by Perceptual Symbol Systems (Barsalou,
1999; Prinz, 2002). Barsalou and colleagues, for example,
have proposed that the embodied meanings of abstract
concepts may emerge from the “situations” in which they
are used. While this hypothesis may eventually be validated
by behavioral tests, so far it is supported only by descriptive
analyses and in-principle arguments. In outlining this
proposal, Barsalou and Wiemer-Hastings (2005) wrote that
they would “not attempt to provide evidence that modalityspecific systems represent abstract concepts” (pg. 129).
Yet, this is exactly what embodiment theorists must do if
Perceptual Symbols theory is to remain viable. Abstract
concepts are not esoteric oddities that can be bracketed
while we investigate ‘ordinary’ concepts (e.g., the 11th
O.E.D. reports that the most frequent noun in the English
language is time). Arguably, the majority of our words and
concepts are abstract, so it’s quite problematic for
Perceptual Symbols theory if its proponents cannot provide
evidence that modality-specific systems can represent them.
The primary objection to Metaphor Theory that Barsalou
and colleagues raise is that abstract concepts must have
some non-metaphorical structure of their own, or else there
would be nothing for metaphorical structures to map onto
(Barsalou & Wiemer-Hastings, 2005, pg. 133-134),
therefore metaphor theory offers an incomplete explanation.
But far from leveling a devastating critique, they are simply
(and accurately) describing the source domain - target
domain relation that is the essence of metaphor theory.
Interoceptual representations in abstract domains like time,
love, or anger are further structured by motoric and
perceptual representations in more concrete domains like
space, motion, and force.
Importantly, both the
interoceptive representations of target domains and the
perceptuo-motor representations of source domains are of
the sort that could plausibly be ‘embodied’ in Perceptual
Symbols.
As such, Conceptual Metaphor may be
Embodiment Theory’s best hope for accommodating
abstract concepts, thereby avoiding non-starter status.
In the present study, we demonstrate automatic activation
of spatio-motor schemas that appear integral to the
meanings of dozens of abstract concepts. Much remains
unknown about how perceptuo-motor representations
structure target concepts, and Metaphor Theory may never
provide a complete answer. As Barsalou and colleagues
propose, the contexts in which we instantiate abstract
concepts may contribute to their form and content. But
Metaphor Theory appears to provide part of the answer, and
This research was supported in part by NRSA post-doctoral
fellowship #F32MH072502 to D.C.
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