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Updated: Jun 11, 2026
07:14
A Method to Study Adaptation to Left-Right Reversed Audition
Published on: October 29, 2018
You heard it here first: readers mentally simulate described sounds
Tad T Brunyé1, Tali Ditman, Caroline R Mahoney
1U.S. Army NSRDEC, Cognitive Science, Natick, MA, USA. tbrunye@alumni.tufts.edu
Acta Psychologica
|July 13, 2010
Summary
Readers automatically create sound imagery when reading sentences with auditory details. This mental simulation of sounds, even without specific tasks, shows reading activates multimodal perceptual symbols.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Psycholinguistics
- Auditory Perception
Background:
- Reading comprehension involves more than just extracting semantic meaning.
- Previous research has focused on visual and action-based mental imagery during reading.
- The role of spontaneous auditory imagery in reading remains less explored.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether readers spontaneously simulate implied auditory information presented in sentences.
- To determine if auditory imagery is activated automatically during reading, independent of task demands.
- To expand the understanding of multimodal mental simulation during language processing.
Main Methods:
- Participants read sentences containing implicit auditory details.
- An unrelated sound categorization task (real vs. fake sounds) was administered.
- Experiments varied the temporal proximity and task structure to assess automaticity.
Main Results:
- Readers were faster to identify 'real' sounds when they were implied by preceding sentences.
- This facilitation occurred regardless of whether the reading and sound tasks were sequential or blocked.
- Results indicate spontaneous activation of auditory imagery.
Conclusions:
- Reading comprehension involves the automatic simulation of implied auditory characteristics.
- Mental simulation during reading extends beyond visual and action modalities, supporting a multimodal perspective.
- These findings highlight the rich, embodied nature of language processing.
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