Laboratory of Neuropsychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Neuroscience and Imaging, G. d'Annunzio University, Chieti, Italy.
Neurosci Lett. 2011 Apr 1;492(2):89-93. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2011.01.063. Epub 2011 Jan 31.
Several studies on humans have shown a recruitment of the sensory-motor system in the perception of action-related visual and verbal material, suggesting that actions are represented through sensory-motor processes. To date, these studies have not disentangled whether such a recruitment is epiphenomenal or necessary to action representation. Here we took advantage of repetition priming as a tool to investigate the cognitive representation of actions, and systematically looked whether a concurrent motor or verbal task had a detrimental effect on this representation. In a first experiment participants discriminated images depicting meaningless and meaningful actions, while performing either a concurrent sensory-motor or an articulatory suppression task. Images were classified as depicting a repeated or a new action, relative to the previous image in the trial series. We found a facilitation by repetition priming, that was unaffected by the articulatory task but was completely abolished by the sensory-motor task. In a second experiment, we investigated whether the sensory-motor system is also causally involved in processing action-related verbs. In this experiment actions were presented as written infinitive verbs rather than as images. The facilitation by repetition priming was again unaffected by the concurrent articulatory task, while the sensory-motor concurrent task, although reducing the facilitation, did not abolish it. Our data provide evidence that the sensory-motor system is differentially involved during visual processing of actions and during processing of action-related verbs. Results are discussed within the theoretical frame of embodied cognition.
一些针对人类的研究表明，在感知与动作相关的视觉和言语材料时，会招募感觉运动系统，这表明动作是通过感觉运动过程来表示的。到目前为止，这些研究还没有区分这种招募是附带现象还是动作表示所必需的。在这里，我们利用重复启动作为一种工具来研究动作的认知表示，并系统地观察同时进行的运动或言语任务是否会对这种表示产生不利影响。在第一个实验中，参与者在执行同时进行的感觉运动或发音抑制任务的同时，对描绘无意义和有意义动作的图像进行了区分。相对于试验系列中的前一个图像，将图像分类为描绘重复或新的动作。我们发现重复启动会产生促进作用，而发音任务不会影响这种促进作用，但感觉运动任务会完全消除这种促进作用。在第二个实验中，我们研究了感觉运动系统是否也参与处理与动作相关的动词。在这个实验中，动作是以书面动词不定式的形式呈现的，而不是以图像的形式呈现的。重复启动的促进作用不受同时进行的发音任务的影响，而感觉运动的同时任务虽然减少了促进作用，但并没有消除它。我们的数据提供了证据，表明感觉运动系统在视觉处理动作和处理与动作相关的动词时会有不同的参与。结果在具身认知的理论框架内进行了讨论。
