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Playing on the typewriter, typing on the piano: manipulation knowledge of objects
Jong-Yoon Myung1, Sheila E Blumstein, Julie C Sedivy
1Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Box 1978, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA. jong-yoon_myung@brown.edu
Cognition
|January 10, 2006
Summary
This study shows that how we use objects influences our understanding of words. Object manipulation knowledge is activated automatically, forming part of our mental lexicon.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Psycholinguistics
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Understanding how humans represent knowledge about objects is crucial in cognitive science.
- Sensory and motor-based functional knowledge, related to object manipulation, is a key aspect of this representation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the retrieval of sensory/motor-based functional knowledge of man-made objects.
- To determine if manipulation knowledge is accessed automatically during language processing.
Main Methods:
- Experiment 1: Auditory lexical decision task using prime-target word pairs with shared manipulation features.
- Experiment 2: Eye-tracking during a visual-auditory object identification task to measure visual attention to object images.
Main Results:
- Participants responded faster to target words preceded by primes with shared manipulation features (Experiment 1).
- Participants fixated object images related to auditory targets more frequently than unrelated objects or visual controls (Experiment 2).
Conclusions:
- Manipulation knowledge of object words is retrieved automatically, without conscious effort.
- This manipulation knowledge is an integral component of the lexical-semantic representation of objects.
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