Priming effects between spatial meaning of verbs and numbers are modulated by time intervals: Early interference and...

In 2 recent studies it has been shown that processing high or low number primes (8, 9 vs. 1, 2) affect the processing of subsequent target words with an implicit spatial cue up or down (e.g., sky, to rise vs. floor, to fall) (Lachmair, Dudschig, de la Vega, & Kaup, 2014a; Lachmair, Dudschig, Ruiz Fernández, & Kaup, 2014b). It has been argued that the interactions for number-noun and number-verb pairs are due to overlapping representations of numbers and words. If this is true, one should find similar interactions by using words as primes and numbers as targets (neuronal-overlap-of-meaning hypothesis). It has also been argued that the reversed interaction for number-verb pairs as shown in Lachmair et al. (2014b) might be due to a dynamic simulation of the associated motion (dynamic-spatial-grounding hypothesis). This was tested by using 3 different time intervals for target presentation. The results show first that the neuronal-overlap-of-meaning hypothesis was only supported for verb-number pairs (Experiment 1), not for noun-number pairs (Experiment 2). Second, the dynamic-spatial-grounding hypothesis was supported by the results for verb-number pairs as expected. This suggests that neuronal representations of numbers and verbs share common spatial meaning attributes. Moreover, the results suggest that the meaning of verbs with implicit directional cue up or down is dynamically simulated according to the course of their movement. (PsycINFO Database Record