Motor resonance and linguistic focus

Taylor, Lawrence and Zwaan, Rolf (2008) Motor resonance and linguistic focus. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 61 (6). pp. 896-904. ISSN 1747-0218

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Abstract

Previous studies have demonstrated that verbal descriptions of actions activate compatible motor responses (Glenberg & Kaschak, 2002; Zwaan & Taylor, 2006). The present study replicates previous findings showing that, within a sentence, such activation is localized on the verb that denotes the action. Moreover, motor resonance is found to yield to linguistic focus. If a postverbal adverb maintains focus on a matching action (“slowly” or “quickly”), motor resonance occurs, but if the adverb shifts the focus to the agent (e.g., “obediently” or “eagerly”), a cessation of motor resonance ensues. These findings are discussed within the context of theories of motor resonance, action understanding, mental simulation, and linguistic focus.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Linguistics, Psychology--Experiments
Subjects:	C800 Psychology
Department:	Faculties > Health and Life Sciences > Psychology
Related URLs:	Publisher
Depositing User:	EPrint Services
Date Deposited:	11 Mar 2011 11:54
Last Modified:	12 Oct 2019 16:28
URI:	http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/2343

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