Enhancing semantic congruity effects with category-contingent comparative judgments

In each of two experiments the direction of a binary comparison was contingent on the category of the stimulus pair. In one experiment, participants had to compare the size of animals from memory. On congruent trials, they had to select the smaller animal if both were small and the larger if both were large and on incongruent trials they selected the larger if both were small and the smaller if both were large. In a second experiment, participants had to compare visual extents and the direction of the comparison was contingent on whether the lines were short or long. RTs were increased and semantic congruity effects were greatly amplified with the category contingent instructions relative to the conventional non-contingent instructions, precisely as predicted by the class of evidence accrual models of decisional processing and contrary to the single sample stage models of the semantic congruity effect

Embodied Processing at Six Linguistic Granularity Levels: A Consensus Paper

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