Perception and Action Systems in High-Level Cognition

语言表达了意义，但如何表达呢？ 乍一看，答案似乎很简单：一个人说话，另一个人听，然后他们交换角色。 理解似乎可以归结为听者知道所说的话的意思加上一些语法规则。 但这并不是故事的全部。 为了理解语言，人们把与他们世界中的物体以及与其他人的相关互动的记忆带了出来。 这就好像他们有意识或无意识地想象着对话中描述的情景--成功的理解与成功的想象比语法分析更紧密地联系在一起。 在NSF的支持下，亚瑟·格伦伯格博士将研究语言和想象力的这些特征。 例如，要理解“强风导致帆船倾覆”这句话，可能需要一种想象形式，在这种想象形式中，想象的风施加了足够的力量，使船倾覆。 这种形式的想象可能会引发同样的思维过程，即理解帆船被强风倾覆的感知。 格伦伯格博士使用一种新开发的程序来探索这种可能性。在这种程序中，人们在阅读暗示力量方向相反或相同的句子时按下一个杠杆。 按压的动作使需要相同方向的力的句子更容易阅读，或者使需要相反方向的力的句子更难阅读。 这被解释为语言和感知中使用相同的心理过程的证据。 更多的研究考察了这些想法在英语以外的语言中的应用，以及在数学等非语言领域的表现。 这项研究的更广泛的影响被用来指导阅读补救技术的设计和新型教育工具的创建。

Language conveys meaning but how so? At first the answer seems simple: One person talks while the other listens, and then they exchange roles. Understanding seems to boil down to the listener knowing the meaning of the spoken words plus some rules of grammar. But that is not the whole story. To understand language, people bring to bear memories of related interactions with objects in their world and with other people. It is as though they imagine, consciously or unconsciously, the situations described within the conversation-successful understanding is more closely tied to successful imagination than to grammatical analysis. With NSF-support, Dr. Arthur Glenberg will investigate these characteristics of language and imagination. For example, to understand the sentence "The strong wind caused the sailboat to capsize" may require a form of imagination in which an imagined wind exerts enough force to tip over the boat. This form of imagination may invoke the same processes of mind that would understand the perception of a sailboat capsized by a strong wind. Dr. Glenberg explores such possibilities using a newly developed procedure in which people press a lever while reading sentences that imply force in the opposite or same direction. The action of pressing makes it easier to read sentences that entail force in the same direction, or harder to read for forces in the opposite direction. This is interpreted as evidence that the same mental process is tapped in language and perception. Additional research examines the application of these ideas to languages other than English and to performance in non-linguistic domains such as mathematics. Broader impacts of this research are used to guide the design of reading remediation technologies and the creation of new types of educational tools.