German Paediatric Pain Centre, Children's Hospital Datteln, Witten/Herdecke University, Germany.
Neurosci Lett. 2012 Aug 8;523(1):15-8. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2012.06.025. Epub 2012 Jun 19.
Language comprehension studies have demonstrated that effector-specific activation of the motor system supports the representation of word meaning. The aim of the present study was to test whether motor activation is also relevant for verb production. In the first part of the experiment, participants named photographs of actions either in effector-homogeneous blocks, with all actions involving the same effector, or effector-heterogeneous blocks, with actions involving different effectors. Action-naming latencies were longer in homogeneous blocks, indicating the activation of effector information. In the second part of the experiment, the same participants named action pictures in random order, while performing a motor task with either their hand or foot. The motor task caused interference for action-picture naming: latencies were longer when the effector of the depicted action was congruent with the effector of the action used in the motor task. While these results do not exclude the existence of abstract semantic representations, they indicate that effector-specific effects found in language comprehension extend to language production.
语言理解研究表明，运动系统的效应器特异性激活支持单词意义的表示。本研究的目的是检验运动激活是否与动词产生也有关。在实验的第一部分，参与者在效应器同质性块中命名动作的照片，所有动作都涉及相同的效应器，或者在效应器异质性块中命名动作的照片，动作涉及不同的效应器。在同质性块中，动作命名的潜伏期更长，这表明效应器信息被激活了。在实验的第二部分，相同的参与者随机命名动作图片，同时用手或脚执行一个运动任务。运动任务对动作图片命名造成干扰：当所描绘动作的效应器与运动任务中使用的动作的效应器一致时，潜伏期更长。虽然这些结果并不排除存在抽象语义表示的可能性，但它们表明在语言理解中发现的效应器特异性效应延伸到语言产生。
