Embodied Cognitive Mechanisms In The Comprehension Of Chinese Concrete And Abstract Verbs

Embodied theory proposes that cognitive activities are based on simulations of sensory perception,motor experience,situations,and emotions.However,there is still a theoretical controversy in explaining the process of embodied cognition,whether the understanding of verbs is based on the simulation of a certain action channel or a conceptual metaphor.In this study,four behavioural experiments will be used,based on the experimental paradigm of switch costs in cross modality,to explore the cognition mechanisms of concrete and abstract verbs from the perspective of perceptual action simulation theory and conceptual metaphor theory.Experiment 1: The purpose is to explore whether there is a Modality Switching Costs Effect for concrete verbs.Use concrete verb phrases of eyes,hands,and mouth as experimental materials.Adopting the experimental research paradigm of Modality Switching Costs,36 college students were recruited.This experiment is 3(channel type: oral verb,hand verb,eye verb)× 2(channel matching: consistent before and after,inconsistent)two-factor design.As a result,Modality Switching Costs Effects are found in concrete verb-object phrases,and conversion costs appear in the eye and hand phrases in concrete verb-object phrases.Experiment 2: The purpose is to explore whether there is a Modality Switching Costs Effect for concrete verbs and abstract nouns.Use concrete verbs of eyes,hands,and mouths together with abstract nouns as experimental materials.Adopting the experimental research paradigm of Modality Switching Costs,36 college students were recruited.This experiment is 3(channel type: oral verb,hand verb,eye verb)× 2(channel matching: consistent before and after,inconsistent)two-factor design.As a result,the cross-Modality Switching Costs Effect was found in the concrete verb-collocation abstract noun phrase,and the conversion cost appeared in the eye and oral phrases in the concrete verb-collocation abstract noun verb phrase.Experiment 3: The purpose is to explore whether there is a Modality Switching Costs Effect for abstract verb phrases.Use abstract verb-object phrases of eyes,hands,mouth and pure psychology as experimental materials.Adopting the experimental research paradigm of Modality Switching Costs,36 college students were recruited.This experiment is 4(abstract verb types: oral verbs,hand verbs,eye verbs,psychological verbs)× 2(channel matching: consistent,inconsistent)two-factor design.As a result,cross-Modality Switching Costs Effects are found in abstract verb phrases,and hand and oral phrases appear in abstract verb-object phrases.The above three experiments prove that both concrete verbs and abstract verbs have Modality Switching Costs Effects.The purpose is to investigate whether the consistency of the spatial direction of metaphorical mapping affects the conversion cost of verbs in different channels.Use verb-object phrases with different metaphorical spatial orientations as experimental materials.Adopt the experimental research paradigm of conversion cost,recruit 32 college students.2(abstract: concrete start words,abstract start words)× 2(direction matching: consistent,inconsistent)Two-factor design within the subject.The experiment found that the difference in the metaphorical mapping direction of the abstract verb will lead to the direction conversion cost of the target trial,while the concrete verb will have no effect.The results show that the implicit spatial mapping is also activated during the embodied cognitive process of abstract verbs.The synthesis of four experimental results shows that the embodied process of verb understanding includes both the simulation of specific motor processes and the conceptual metaphor process based on spatial orientation.Concrete verbs rely more on perceptual action simulation,while abstract verbs depend on both the perceptual action simulation and the spatial orientation of conceptual metaphors.