Memory for words representing modal concepts. Resource sharing with same-modality perceptsis spontaneously required

The recent grounded cognition literature suggests that modal perception and conceptual representations share common modal systems and modal resources. We sought to show that memory and memory of words predominantly related to a visual modality (e.g., Light) or to an auditory modality (e.g., Song) are hindered more by sensory interference from a related than an unrelated modality. This result cannot be explained by semantic interference, because the present study manipulated interference using meaningless stimuli. Rather, we suggest that people spontaneously access conceptual sensory attributes when detecting words and when trying to memorize words, and that this process comes with modality-specific costs. We discuss this finding in the broader context of grounded cognition and compare it to previous findings using closely related sensory-conceptual designs.