University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Mem Cognit. 2012 Jan;40(1):93-100. doi: 10.3758/s13421-011-0134-8.
Mental states-such as thinking, remembering, or feeling angry, happy, or dizzy-have a clear internal component. We feel a certain way when we are in these states. These internal experiences may be simulated when people understand conceptual references to mental states. However, mental states can also be described from an "external" perspective, for example when referring to "smiling." In those cases, simulation of visible outside features may be more relevant for understanding. In a switching costs paradigm, we presented semantically unrelated sentences describing emotional and nonemotional mental states while manipulating their internal or external focus. The results show that switching costs occur when participants shift between sentences with an internal and an external focus. This suggests that different forms of simulation underlie understanding these sentences. In addition, these effects occurred for emotional and nonemotional mental states, suggesting that they are grounded in a similar way-through the process of simulation.
心理状态——如思考、记忆或感到愤怒、快乐或头晕——具有明显的内在成分。当我们处于这些状态时，我们会有某种感觉。当人们理解心理状态的概念性参考时，这些内在体验可能会被模拟。然而，心理状态也可以从“外部”角度来描述，例如当提到“微笑”时。在那些情况下，模拟可见的外部特征可能更有助于理解。在转换成本范式中，我们呈现了描述情绪和非情绪心理状态的语义上不相关的句子，同时操纵它们的内部或外部焦点。结果表明，当参与者在具有内部和外部焦点的句子之间转换时，会出现转换成本。这表明不同形式的模拟是理解这些句子的基础。此外，这些效果既出现在情绪和非情绪心理状态中，表明它们是以类似的方式——通过模拟过程——为基础的。
