Perception and Action Systems in High-Level Cognition

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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.