An ERP study of motor compatibility effects in action language

This ERP study explores the brain's response to the manipulation of motor compatibility in action-related language. In Experiment 1 participants read sentences in which a protagonist performed two different manual actions either simultaneously or consecutively (e.g. While/after cleaning the wound he unrolled the bandage…). The ERPs were measured in the second-clause verb (e.g. unrolled) and noun (e.g. bandage). Notably, only the noun showed compatibility effects, namely a larger N400 in the simultaneous (incompatible) version than in the consecutive (compatible) version, suggesting that readers need to integrate the meaning of the whole sentence to evaluate the feasibility of the actions. In Experiment 2, motor compatibility was manipulated in a different way: all the sentences described the protagonist as performing two simultaneous actions that were both manual (While cleaning the wound he unrolled the bandage), or one action that was perceptual and the other manual (While looking at the wound he unrolled the bandage). The N400 effects for the former incompatible condition were replicated, again in the second-clause noun. The results demonstrated that readers of action language employ their pragmatic world knowledge to test the feasibility of motor actions, taking into account the embodied constraints of such actions.