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The Action-Sentence Compatibility Effect in ASL: the role of semantics vs. perception*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 November 2014

KRISTEN SECORA  and
KAREN EMMOREY
KRISTEN SECORA*
Affiliation:
San Diego State University, and University of California San Diego
KAREN EMMOREY
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
*
†Address for correspondence: Kristen Secora, Lab for Language and Cognitive Neuroscience, 6495 Alvarado Road, Suite 200, San Diego, CA 92120. tel: (619) 594-8049; fax: (619) 594-8056; e-mail: ksecora@ucsd.edu
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Abstract

Embodied theories of cognition propose that humans use sensorimotor systems in processing language. The Action-Sentence Compatibility Effect (ACE) refers to the finding that motor responses are facilitated after comprehending sentences that imply movement in the same direction. In sign languages there is a potential conflict between sensorimotor systems and linguistic semantics: movement away from the signer is perceived as motion toward the comprehender. We examined whether perceptual processing of sign movement or verb semantics modulate the ACE. Deaf ASL signers performed a semantic judgment task while viewing signed sentences expressing toward or away motion. We found a significant congruency effect relative to the verb’s semantics rather than to the perceived motion. This result indicates that (a) the motor system is involved in the comprehension of a visual–manual language, and (b) motor simulations for sign language are modulated by verb semantics rather than by the perceived visual motion of the hands.

Keywords

Action-Sentence Compatibility Effectembodied cognitionmental simulationdeafsign language
Type
Research Article
Information
Language and Cognition , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , June 2015 , pp. 305 - 318
Copyright
Copyright © UK Cognitive Linguistics Association 2014 

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Footnotes

*

This work was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communicative Disorders (NIDCD) (RO1 DC010997) awarded to Karen Emmorey and San Diego State University. Kristen Secora was supported by a training grant from NIDCD (T32 DC0007361). We thank the members of the Laboratory for Language and Cognitive Neuroscience at SDSU for their help with the study, Michael Secora for help with the illustrations, and all of the deaf participants who made this research possible.

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