Authors
Sarah E Anderson, Teenie Matlock, Caitlin Fausey, Michael J Spivey
Publication date
2008
Journal
Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
Pages
143-148
Description
What role does grammatical aspect play in understanding everyday motion events? Narrative understanding tasks have investigated differences between the past progressive (was walking) and the simple past (walked), showing differences in prominence of information, but details about the temporal dynamics of processing have been largely ignored. The current work uses a novel mouse-tracking method (adapted from Spivey, Grosjean, & Knoblich, 2005) to explore motor output in response to aspectual differences in language. Participants heard descriptions of motion events in the past progressive or simple past and used a mouse to place a character in a scene to match the description. Preliminary results indicate that different aspectual forms can lead to different character placements when people conceptualize motion along a path (eg, slower mouse movements with past progressive). The results support the idea that perceptual simulation occurs in linguistic processing, in this case, at the level of grammar and with motor output.
Total citations
201020112012201320142015201620172018201920202021202220232024432577342111
Scholar articles
S Anderson, T Matlock, CM Fausey, MJ Spivey - Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the …, 2008