The Role of Sensorimotor Strength in Understanding Chinese Concepts

Introduction Sensorimotor experience plays a crucial role in the conceptual representation within our language system. Recently, numerous studies have explored the significance of perceptual and motor experiences in comprehending concepts across various languages. Methods To examine how sensorimotor experiences contribute to conceptual processing in Chinese, 137 native speakers of Chinese performed a rating task to evaluate the relevance of perceptual modalities and action effectors for a list of Chinese concepts. Results This study revealed correlations between perceptual modalities and action effectors. The sensorimotor grounding of Chinese concepts is organized into three functionally distinct domains, reflecting embodied semantic clusters. Specifically, the first domain encompasses dimensions related to the foot/leg, torso, hand/arm, visual, and haptic modalities. The second domain integrates the mouth/throat, gustatory, and olfactory dimensions. The third domain comprises dimensions related to the head, auditory, and interoceptive modalities. In Bayesian linear regression, the models for the hand/arm, gustatory, and head modalities demonstrate strong predictive capabilities within their respective domains. Discussion These findings show that conceptual representation in Chinese is systematically organized along distinct embodied sensorimotor domains. It provides further evidence for the embodiment of language processing in Chinese, thus reinforcing the notion that bodily experiences are integral to linguistic comprehension and representation.