Constituents of action evoked by language and perception.

一个广泛持有的观点是，可操作对象的图像可以自动触发抓取动作的组成部分。动作表征同样是由表示动作的单词或句子引起的，这证实了在语言理解过程中动作是默认模仿的这一观点。这些说法有多有效？如果这是真的，那么当我们看到可抓取的物体或注意到像“使用喷雾器”这样的句子时，运动意图在选择动作特征中的作用是什么？预期的动作仅仅是从已经活跃的视觉运动表征中选择出来的吗？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词语的运动成分方面发挥着根本作用。长期目标是阐明感知、语言和行动之间的关系。本提案的第1节描述了一组严格追求以下问题的实验：在什么任务条件下，如果有的话，可操作物体的图像会触发抓取动作的成分？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。一个新颖的，可选的假设将追求评估这些运动表征的性质更详细，并呼吁这一假设的问题。第三个问题如下。像手机这样的物体，根据你是想使用它还是想举起它，会有不同的动作。如果目标导向的动作仅仅是从已经存在的视觉运动表征中选择出来的，那么像“拿起手机”这样的祈使句的意思应该是增强提升，而不是使用行动（反之亦然），即使在没有行动意图的情况下。在第3节中，我开发了一系列新颖的实验，这些实验将揭示祈使句诱导的行为的性质，这取决于听者是否(I)仅仅关注意义；（ii）意图直接对意义采取行动，或（iii）意图在对同一或不同物体进行另一行动时暂时推迟该行动。意义是否从一组由指定对象增强的相互竞争的启示中选择一个动作？或者，运动意图是否在行为选择中起着重要作用？祈使句诱发的动作表征的激活和选择从根本上取决于听者的意图。我的研究将加深我们对不同任务条件下由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.