Embodied models of language comprehension are based on the assumption that words become associated with sensorimotor experiences during initial word learning. To test this hypothesis, adult participants learned artificial words as labels for novel objects in a multisensory environment. In a word learning phase, novel objects were located in the participant’s upper or lower visual field and participants learned the objects’ names by interacting with them. In a test phase, participants responded to the color of the words with either an upwards or a downwards directed arm movement in a Stroop-like paradigm. Responses were fastest when the movement direction was compatible with the word’s referent location (i.e., the location of the novel object in vertical space) during the learning phase. This finding suggests that sensorimotor experiences become associated with words during initial word learning. The results of the current study and implications for language learning are discussed.

In this study, two modalities of expression (verbal and visual) are compared and contrasted, in relation to their ability and their limitations to construct and express metaphors. A representative set of visual metaphors and a representative set of linguistic metaphors are here compared, and the semantic similarity between metaphor terms is modeled within the two sets. Such similarity is operationalized in terms of semantic features produced by informants in a property generation task (e.g., McRae et al., 2005). Semantic features provide insights into conceptual content, and play a role in deep conceptual processing, as opposed to shallow linguistic processing. Thus, semantic features appear to be useful for modeling metaphor comprehension, assuming that metaphors are matters of thought rather than simple figures of speech (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). The question tackled in this paper is whether semantic features can account for the similarity between metaphor terms of both visual and verbal metaphors. For this purpose, a database of semantic features was collected and then used to analyze fifty visual metaphors and fifty verbal metaphors. It was found that the number of semantic features shared between metaphor terms is predicted by the modality of expression of the metaphor: the terms compared in visual metaphors share semantic features, while the terms compared in verbal metaphors do not. This suggests that the two modalities of expression afford different ways to construct and express metaphors.

The present paper investigates the sense making practices of participants in interaction within the context of reception studies of advertising and explores the cognitive nature of intertextuality and interdiscursivity as evidence of conceptual integration. The paper argues that sense making, through its intertextual and interdiscursive nature, is a carrier of attitudinal disposition which is manifested in the lexical selection of evaluative items arising from conceptual integration. The data examined for this study were collected from informants in focus groups when discussing a series of printed adverts that make reference to works of art. The results of the analysis indicate that intertextuality and interdiscursivity can be seen as constituting evidence of the conceptual phenomena of blending theory in sense making from where evaluative disposition emerges. They further suggest that both are processes in the audience’s sense making process rather than merely a feature of texts.

Aims. Morphological skills in Williams syndrome (WS) are a controversial issue, particularly cross-linguistically. Methods. We assessed pluralization patterns of nouns, inflection of verbs in the past, and gender assignment, inflection, and agreement within the noun phrase in a sample of Spanish-speaking children with WS compared to typically developing (TD) children matched on mental age (VA-TD) and on chronological age (CA-TD) age. Results. Children with WS attribute grammatical gender correctly in a production task, but they have problems with inferring the referent’s sex from the gender of the noun in a comprehension task. Additionally, they correctly pluralize nouns and properly inflect regular verbs, but they have problems with irregular verbs. Our findings suggest that they have mastered the productive rules, but they perform like younger children regarding irregular items.

This study explores the relation between pain sensitivity and the cognitive processing of words. 130 participants evaluated the pain-relatedness of a total of 600 two-syllabic nouns, and subsequently reported on their own pain sensitivity. The results demonstrate that pain-sensitive people associate words more strongly with pain than less sensitive people. In particular, concrete nouns like ‘syringe’, ‘wound’, ‘knife’, and ‘cactus’ are considered to be more pain-related for those who are more pain-sensitive. These findings dovetail with recent studies suggesting that certain bodily characteristics influence the way people form mental representations (Casasanto, 2009). We discuss three mechanisms which could potentially account for our findings: attention and memory bias, prototype analysis, and embodied cognition. We argue that, whereas none of these three accounts can be ruled out, the embodied cognition hypothesis provides a particularly promising view to accommodate our data.

Interpreting temporal statements involves adopting alternative frames of reference. Previous work has shown that people draw on time-moving or ego-moving perspectives to interpret statements such as Next Wednesday´s meeting has been moved forward two days. The expression move forward in English can be translated into Spanish as mover hacia adelante or adelantar. Corpus data show that when these expressions are used metaphorically to describe time, the former is typically used to describe events parting from the ego (ego-moving perspective) while the latter is typically used to describe events moving towards the ego (time-moving perspective). We provide empirical evidence that different frames of reference are elicited depending on the specific metaphorical expression in Spanish (Corpus Analysis, Experiments 1 and 2), to the extent that the use of these linguistic forms in temporal sentences affects subsequent spatial reasoning (Experiment 3). We conclude that Spanish has some metaphorical expressions that are not neutral regarding the ego-/time-moving perspectives, and that their use affects how people draw on spatial motion schemas when thinking about time and space.