Faculty of Psychology, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan, Italy.
J Neurophysiol. 2013 Apr;109(7):1782-92. doi: 10.1152/jn.00894.2012. Epub 2013 Jan 9.
Human languages can express opposite propositions by means of the negative operator "not," which turns affirmative sentences into negative ones. Psycholinguistic research has indicated that negative meanings are formed by transiently reducing the access to mental representations of negated conceptual information. Neuroimaging studies have corroborated these findings, showing reduced activation of concept-specific embodied neural systems by negative versus affirmative sentences. This "disembodiment effect" of sentential negation should have two distinct consequences: first, the embodied systems should be computationally more free to support concurrent tasks when processing negative than affirmative sentences; second, the computational interference should only be reduced when there is a strict semantic congruency between the negated concept and the referent targeted by concurrent tasks. We tested these two predictions in two complementary experiments involving the comprehension of action-related sentences and kinematic measurements of its effects on concurrent, congruent actions. Sentences referred to actions involving either proximal or distal arm musculature. In experiment 1, requiring a proximal arm movement, we found interference reduction for negative proximal sentences. In experiment 2, requiring a distal arm movement, we found interference reduction for negative distal sentences. This dissociation provides the first conclusive evidence in support of a disembodiment theory of negation. We conclude that the computational cost resulting from the insertion of an additional lexical item ("not") in negative sentences is compensated by solely storing a concept in affirmative form in semantic memory, since its negative counterpart can be produced by transiently reducing the access to such stored semantic information.
人类语言可以通过否定词“不”来表达相反的命题，将肯定句转换为否定句。心理语言学研究表明，否定意义是通过暂时减少对否定概念信息的心理表示的访问来形成的。神经影像学研究证实了这些发现，表明否定句比肯定句对特定概念的具身神经系统的激活减少。这种句子否定的“去具体化效应”应该有两个明显的后果：首先，在处理否定句时，具身系统在计算上应该更自由地支持并发任务；其次，只有当否定概念与并发任务所指向的参照具有严格的语义一致性时，计算干扰才会减少。我们在两个互补的实验中检验了这两个预测，这些实验涉及到对与动作相关的句子的理解和对其对并发、一致动作的影响的运动学测量。句子涉及到近端或远端手臂肌肉的动作。在实验 1 中，需要进行近端手臂运动，我们发现否定的近端句子的干扰减少。在实验 2 中，需要进行远端手臂运动，我们发现否定的远端句子的干扰减少。这种分离为否定的去具体化理论提供了第一个确凿的证据支持。我们得出结论，否定句中插入一个额外的词汇项（“不”）所产生的计算成本可以通过仅将一个概念以肯定的形式存储在语义记忆中来补偿，因为否定的概念可以通过暂时减少对这种存储的语义信息的访问来产生。
