Mathôt Sebastiaan, Grainger Jonathan, Strijkers Kristof
1 Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Groningen.
2 Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive, Unité Mixte de Recherche (UMR) 7290, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Aix-Marseille University.
Psychol Sci. 2017 Aug;28(8):1116-1124. doi: 10.1177/0956797617702699. Epub 2017 Jun 14.
Theories about embodiment of language hold that when you process a word's meaning, you automatically simulate associated sensory input (e.g., perception of brightness when you process lamp) and prepare associated actions (e.g., finger movements when you process typing). To test this latter prediction, we measured pupillary responses to single words that conveyed a sense of brightness (e.g., day) or darkness (e.g., night) or were neutral (e.g., house). We found that pupils were largest for words conveying darkness, of intermediate size for neutral words, and smallest for words conveying brightness. This pattern was found for both visually presented and spoken words, which suggests that it was due to the words' meanings, rather than to visual or auditory properties of the stimuli. Our findings suggest that word meaning is sufficient to trigger a pupillary response, even when this response is not imposed by the experimental task, and even when this response is beyond voluntary control.
关于语言具身化的理论认为，当你处理一个单词的含义时，你会自动模拟相关的感官输入（例如，当你处理“lamp”这个词时对亮度的感知）并准备相关的动作（例如，当你处理“typing”这个词时的手指动作）。为了检验后一个预测，我们测量了对传达明亮感（如“day”）、黑暗感（如“night”）或中性意义（如“house”）的单个单词的瞳孔反应。我们发现，对于传达黑暗的单词，瞳孔最大；对于中性单词，瞳孔大小居中；对于传达明亮的单词，瞳孔最小。无论是视觉呈现的单词还是口头说出的单词，都发现了这种模式，这表明这是由于单词的含义，而不是刺激的视觉或听觉属性。我们的研究结果表明，单词的含义足以引发瞳孔反应，即使这种反应不是由实验任务强制产生的，即使这种反应超出了自主控制范围。
