Künecke Janina, Sommer Werner, Schacht Annekathrin, Palazova Marina
Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Courant Research Centre Text Structures, Georg-August University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.
Psychophysiology. 2015 Dec;52(12):1590-8. doi: 10.1111/psyp.12555. Epub 2015 Oct 6.
Semantic knowledge is thought to be at least partially grounded in sensory, motor, and affective information, acquired through experiences in our inner and outer world. The reactivation of experience-related information during meaning access is called simulation. In the affective simulation account, it is assumed that the grounding information depends on the concepts' concreteness. Whereas abstract concepts are thought to be mainly represented through affective experiential information, concrete words rely more on sensory-motor experiential information. To test this hypothesis, we measured facial muscle activity as an indicator of affective simulation during visual word recognition. Words varied on the dimensions of concreteness and valence. Behavioral and electromyographic data were analyzed with linear mixed-effects models with maximal random effect structure to optimize generalization over participants and word samples. Contrary to this hypothesis, we found a valence effect in the m. corrugator supercilii only in response to concrete but not to abstract words. Our data show that affective simulation as measured with facial muscle activity occurs in response to concrete rather than to abstract words. More concrete words are supposed to have higher context availability and richer visual imagery, which might promote affective simulation on the expressive level of facial muscle activity. The results are in line with embodied accounts of semantic representation but speak against its predominant role for representing affective information in abstract concepts.
语义知识被认为至少部分基于通过我们内外世界的经历所获得的感官、运动和情感信息。在意义获取过程中与经历相关信息的重新激活被称为模拟。在情感模拟理论中，假定基础信息取决于概念的具体性。抽象概念被认为主要通过情感体验信息来表征，而具体词汇则更多地依赖于感觉运动体验信息。为了验证这一假设，我们测量了面部肌肉活动，以此作为视觉单词识别过程中情感模拟的指标。单词在具体性和效价维度上有所不同。行为数据和肌电图数据采用具有最大随机效应结构的线性混合效应模型进行分析，以优化对参与者和单词样本的泛化。与该假设相反，我们发现只有在对具体单词而非抽象单词的反应中，皱眉肌才会出现效价效应。我们的数据表明，通过面部肌肉活动测量的情感模拟是对具体单词而非抽象单词的反应。更具体的单词应该具有更高的语境可用性和更丰富的视觉意象，这可能会在面部肌肉活动的表达层面上促进情感模拟。这些结果与语义表征的具身理论相符，但反对其在抽象概念中表征情感信息的主导作用。
