The Influence Of Biological Movement Perception On The Processing Of Chinese Action Verbs From The Perspective Of Embodied Cognition Theory

According to the theoretical framework of embodied cognition,human cognition is deeply rooted in the sensorimotor system.Therefore,language as an advanced cognitive activity is also related to the sensorimotor system.In recent years,based on the sensorimotor system,the relationship between biological movement and language has become a hot topic in interdisciplinary research.After reviewing the relationship between biological movement and language,we found that previous studies mainly focused on the influence of language on biological movement processing,and just a few studies were conducted to investigate whether the reverse model exists.This present study adopts an empirical study and uses reaction time as a research indicator to investigate the relationship between biological movement perception and language.The three research questions in this study are:（1）Does biological movement perception affect the processing of Chinese action verbs?（2）What is the influence of the inversion effect of biological movement on the processing of Chinese action verbs?（3）Is there any difference in the influence of inverted biological movement and standard biological movement on the processing of Chinese action verbs?This study consists of two experiments in total.Experiment 1 adopts a single-factor within-subject experiment design with four levels,in which the independent variable is the type of action verbs（congruent action verbs,incongruent action verbs,non-action verbs,and pseudo verbs）,and the dependent variable is reaction time.Participants are required to conduct the language decision lexical task of the Chinese character string that is presented after observing the point-light displays.“F”is true and“J”is false.A total of 32 college students from SISU are selected as participants in the experiment.The design,method,and task of Experiment 2 are totally the same with Experiment 1,while only standard biological movement point-light displays are replaced by inverted ones,and another 32 college students from SISU who will not participate in Experiment 1 are invited to be the participants of Experiment 2.Both the two experiments are conducted in the Behavior Lab of SISU.Before the formal experiments,the verb-video matching degree of biological movement point-light displays is evaluated by questionnaires through the Internet,and the familiarity and imageability of all verbs are evaluated.Formal experimental materials include standard point-light displays,inverted point-light displays,action verbs,and pseudo verbs.The two experiments are programmed by E-Prime 2.0 and experimental materials are presented at random on the 17-inch wide screen.All behavioral data generated by the two experiments are finally entered into SPSS16.0,and statistical analysis is performed using one-way ANOVA and t-test.The experimental results are as follows:（1）Experiment 1 shows that biological movement perception has a significant effect on the processing of Chinese action verbs[F（2,62）=47.04;p=0.000<0.05,η2=0.60].Participants’reaction time for processing congruent action verbs(M_CAV=700.09ms)is shorter than that of incongruent action verbs(M_IAV=740.88ms)and non-action verbs(M_NAV=770.03ms).This shows that observing biological movement has activated sensory-motor representations,which produces an embodied simulation effect,thereby facilitating the processing of action verbs congruent with the observed actions.（2）Experiment 2 shows that inverted biological movement has a significant effect on the processing of action verbs[F（2,62）;p=0.000<0.05,η2=0.34].Participants’reaction time for processing congruent action verbs(M_CAV=698.75ms)is shorter than that of incongruent action verbs(M_IAV=726.16ms)and non-action verb(M_NAV=752.84ms).This shows that the inversion effect of biological movement has no significant effect on the processing of Chinese action verbs,and observing inverted biological movements can still activate the sensorimotor representations and produces an embodied simulation effect,thereby promoting the processing of action verbs congruent with the observed actions.（3）The comparison results of Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 shows that under the two conditions,there are no significant differences among the reaction time for participants to process congruent action verbs[t _CAV（32）=0.046,p=0.963],incongruent action verbs[t _IAV（32）=0.525,p=0.602],and non-action verbs[t _NAV（32）=0.500,p=0.619],indicating that there is no significant difference in the effects of inverted biological movement and standard biological movement on Chinese action verb processing.To sum up:Biological movement perception can promote the processing of congruent action verbs,which may indicate that biological movement perception and action language processing are based on the same neural network,and the processing of biological movements and action verbs will activate the same sensorimotor representation,thereby enjoying similar embodied mechanism.