The agent is right: when motor embodied cognition is space-dependent

PLoS One. 2011;6(9):e25036. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0025036. Epub 2011 Sep 23.

Abstract

The role of embodied mechanisms in processing sentences endowed with a first person perspective is now widely accepted. However, whether embodied sentence processing within a third person perspective would also have motor behavioral significance remains unknown. Here, we developed a novel version of the Action-sentence Compatibility Effect (ACE) in which participants were asked to perform a movement compatible or not with the direction embedded in a sentence having a first person (Experiment 1: You gave a pizza to Louis) or third person perspective (Experiment 2: Lea gave a pizza to Louis). Results indicate that shifting perspective from first to third person was sufficient to prevent motor embodied mechanisms, abolishing the ACE. Critically, ACE was restored in Experiment 3 by adding a virtual "body" that allowed participants to know "where" to put themselves in space when taking the third person perspective, thus demonstrating that motor embodied processes are space-dependent. A fourth, control experiment, by dissociating motor response from the transfer verb's direction, supported the conclusion that perspective-taking may induce significant ACE only when coupled with the adequate sentence-response mapping.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Cognition*
  • Female
  • France
  • Humans
  • Language
  • Male
  • Models, Biological
  • Motor Skills
  • Movement
  • Reaction Time
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Space Perception*
  • Speech
  • Young Adult