Mental Simulation Of Implied Shape Information In Chinese Sentence Comprehension And Production

emantic representation is one of the core problems in psycholinguistic research.Nowadays,the embodied cognitive view of language has gradually attracted attention and recognition.Embodied cognition holds that the study of semantic representation should be based on the relationship between mind and body.The theory of perceptual symbol system,which represents the strong embodied view,points out that when people comprehend language,they will mentally simulate the perceptual information of objects,such as shape,color,direction,etc.,and the brain will form relevant perceptual symbols.Previous studies have demonstrated the involvement of mental simulation in language comprehension through the paradigm of sentence-picture verification.However,previous studies on mental simulation were mostly carried out in the process of language comprehension,and few studies have explored mental simulation from the perspective of language production.At the same time,previous studies on mental simulation were mostly carried out in English and other alphabetic languages,but few in Chinese,especially in the production process.Based on this,this study involved two behavioral experiments,aiming to explore the mental simulation of object shape information in Chinese sentence comprehension and production,and examine its correlation with mental imagery.The experiments employed the sentence-picture verification paradigm with the moving window technique.Experiment 1 explored whether objects’ implied shapes in the sentence were mentally simulated when Chinese sentences were comprehended.During the experiment,first of all,a sentence was presented on the computer screen,and the participant pressed the space bar to continue after understanding the sentence.Then,a picture was presented on the screen,and the participant needed to press the button to judge whether the object in the picture was mentioned in the sentence.The independent variable of experiment 1 was whether the objects in the picture matched sentences,and the dependent variable was the reaction time of the participants in this task.In experiment 2,three words were presented on a computer screen.One target word and one underlined word of the two related words were used to make sentences.Then a picture was presented on the screen,and the participants had to judge whether the object in the picture appeared in the sentence.The independent variable of experiment 2 was whether the object in the picture matched the sentence created by the word set,and the dependent variable was the reaction time of the participants in the task.The results showed that:(1)In the Chinese sentence comprehension task,the reaction time of the participants was significantly different when the sentences and pictures were matched or mismatched,and the reaction time was shorter when the shapes suggested by the sentences were matched with the pictures.(2)In the Chinese sentence production task,there was a significant difference in reaction time between the match or mismatch conditions of word set and picture,and the reaction time was shorter when the shape implied by the sentence matched the picture.(3)There was no significant correlation between mental simulation and mental imagery in Chinese sentence comprehension and production.Therefore,it can be concluded that in the process of Chinese sentence comprehension and production,people will mentally simulate the object’s implied shape information in the sentence,and the brain will activate the perceptual symbol of the object shape information.In conclusion,from the perspective of mental simulation in Chinese sentence comprehension and production,this study proved that embodied effect existed not only in the process of sentence comprehension,but also in the process of sentence production,confirming the theory of Perceptual Symbol System again,adding new dimensions to the existing study on the mental simulation of language,and promoting the development of embodied view of language.