Expressing experiences: Sensorimotor activations and interoceptive sensibility influence which words we choose when...

During language production we translate thoughts into articulated speech. While we know much about how different aspects of our thoughts are co-activated during lexical-semantic processing, the range of meaning dimensions that influence which words we choose to express our thoughts and experiences remains largely unknown. Here, we investigated whether (re)activations of bodily experiences have an impact on language production. Participants performed up- and downward head movements while listening to sentence fragments describing situations (e.g. 'You are at the beach and you see…'). When reaching the upward/downward head position they completed the sentence with a freely chosen noun. We found that the activation of experiential traces of space via head movement/position influenced participant's lexical choices. The referents of the produced words were classified by a different group of participants to be located higher up in space after upward movements compared to downward movements. Furthermore, higher levels of interoceptive sensibility as measured using the attention regulation scale from the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness questionnaire (Mehling, Acree, Stewart, Silas, & Jones, 2018) le d to an increased reflection of the sensory and bodily experience in the spatial properties of the produced nouns. We conclude that sensorimotor activations are among the meaning facets that guide which words we chose when speaking. In addition, the tendency to verbally express embodied meaning is enhanced with higher levels of interoceptive sensibility, suggesting that interoception may be a key to understand interindividual differences in how we express our experiences and feelings when we speak or write.