Constituents of action evoked by language and perception.

一种被广泛接受的观点是，可操纵物体的图像可以自动触发抓握动作的成分。动作表征同样会被一个表示动作的单词或句子所唤起，这也印证了动作在语言理解过程中被默许的观点。这些说法的效力有多大？如果是真的，那么当我们看到可抓到的物体或注意到像“使用喷雾器”这样的句子时，运动意图在动作特征选择中的作用是什么？预期的动作仅仅是从已经激活的视觉运动表示中选择的吗？在接下来的五年里，我的研究计划将确定，意图本身在唤起物体和单词的运动成分方面发挥着基础性的作用。更长期的目标是阐明感知、语言和行动之间的关系。这项建议的第一部分描述了一组严格追问以下问题的实验：在什么任务条件下，如果有的话，可操纵物体的图像会触发抓握动作的成分？第2节评估了基于陈述句意义的动作的运动特征是在理解过程中触发的这一主张。我们将寻求一个新的、可供选择的假说，更详细地评估这些运动表征的性质，并对这一假说提出质疑。第三个问题如下。像手机这样的物体，根据其意图是使用还是举起它，会提供不同的动作。如果目标导向的行动仅仅是从已经存在的视觉运动表征中挑选出来的，那么一个命令性句子的意思应该会增强提升力，而不是使用行动(反之亦然)，即使没有行动的意图也是如此。在第三节中，我设计了一系列新颖的实验，将根据听话者是(I)简单地注意到意义；(Ii)打算直接根据意义采取行动，还是(Iii)打算暂时推迟行动，同时对相同或不同的对象进行另一行动，来揭示祈使句所引发的行动的性质。意思是从一组由指定对象强化的相互竞争的启示中选择一个动作吗？或者，运动意图在动作选择中起着基础性的作用吗？可以肯定的是，祈使句对动作表征的激活和选择基本上取决于听话者的意图。本研究将加深我们对不同任务条件下物体和句子触发的运动表征的理解。

A widely held view is that the image of a manipulable object can automatically trigger constituents of grasp actions. Motor representations are likewise evoked by a word or a sentence denoting an action, lending credence to the idea that actions are tacitly emulated during language comprehension. How valid are these claims? If true, then what is the role of motor intentions in the selection of action features when we view graspable objects or attend to a sentence like “use the spraycan”? Are intended actions merely selected from already active visuomotor representations? Over the next five years, my research program will establish that intentions themselves play a fundamental role in evoking the motor constituents of objects and words. The longer term goal is to shed light on the relationship between perception, language and action. Section 1 of this proposal describes a set of experiments that rigorously pursues the following question: Under what task conditions, if any, do images of manipulable objects trigger constituents of grasp actions? Section 2 evaluates the claim that the motor features of the actions based on the meaning of a declarative sentence are triggered during comprehension. A novel, alternative hypothesis will be pursued which evaluates the nature of these motor representations in more detail, and calls this assumption into question. A third issue is the following. An object like a cellphone affords different actions depending on whether the intention is to use or lift it. If goal-directed actions are merely selected from already existing visuomotor representations, the meaning of an imperative sentence like “Pick up the cellphone” should potentiate a lift rather than use action (and vice versa), even in the absence of an intention to act. In Section 3, I develop a novel series of experiments that will shed light on the nature of actions induced by an imperative sentence depending on whether the listener (i) simply attends to the meaning; (ii) intends to act on the meaning directly or (iii) intends to postpone the action momentarily while carrying out another action on the same or different object. Does the meaning select an action from a set of competing affordances potentiated by a designated object? Or, do motor intentions play a fundamental role in the selection of actions? It will be established that the activation and selection of motor representations evoked by an imperative sentence fundamentally depend on the listener's intentions. My research will deepen our understanding of motor representations triggered by objects and sentences under different task conditions.