Ianì Francesco, Foiadelli Andrea, Bucciarelli Monica
Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università di Torino, Torino, Italy.
Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università di Torino, Torino, Italy.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2019 Mar;194:37-50. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2019.01.012. Epub 2019 Feb 7.
Several theoretical approaches suggest that language comprehension and action observation rely on similar mental simulations. Granted that these two simulations partially overlap, we assumed that simulations stemming from action observations are more direct than those stemming from action phrases. The implied prediction was that simulation from action observation should prevail on simulation from action phrases when their effects are contrasted. The results of three experiments confirmed that, when at encoding the phrases were paired with pictures of actions whose kinematics was incongruent with the implied kinematics of the actions described in the phrases, memory for action phrases was impaired (Experiment 1). However, the reverse was not true: when the pictures were paired with phrases representing actions whose kinematics were incongruent with the kinematics of the actions portrayed in the pictures, memory for pictures portraying actions was not impaired (Experiment 2). Also, in line with evidence that simulations from action phrases and those from action observation partially overlap, when their effects were not contrasted their products were misrecognized. In our experiments, when action phrases only presented at recognition described actions depicted in pictures seen at encoding, they were misrecognized as had already been read at encoding (Experiment 1); further, when pictures only presented at recognition portrayed actions described in phrases presented at encoding, they were misrecognized as seen at encoding (Experiment 2). A third experiment excluded the possibility that the pattern of findings was simply a consequence of better memory for pictures of actions as opposed to memory for action phrases (Experiment 3). The implications of our results in relation to the literature on simulation in language comprehension and action observation are discussed.
几种理论方法表明，语言理解和动作观察依赖于相似的心理模拟。假定这两种模拟部分重叠，我们认为源自动作观察的模拟比源自动作短语的模拟更直接。由此得出的预测是，当对比动作观察模拟和动作短语模拟的效果时，动作观察模拟应比动作短语模拟更具优势。三个实验的结果证实，在编码阶段，如果将短语与运动学与短语中描述动作的隐含运动学不一致的动作图片配对，那么对动作短语的记忆会受到损害（实验1）。然而，反之则不然：当图片与代表运动学与图片中描绘动作的运动学不一致的动作短语配对时，对描绘动作的图片的记忆并未受到损害（实验2）。此外，有证据表明，动作短语模拟和动作观察模拟部分重叠，当不对比它们的效果时，它们的产物会被错误识别。在我们的实验中，当仅在识别阶段呈现的动作短语描述了在编码阶段看到的图片中描绘的动作时，它们会被错误识别为在编码阶段已经读过（实验1）；此外，当仅在识别阶段呈现的图片描绘了在编码阶段呈现的短语中描述的动作时，它们会被错误识别为在编码阶段已经看到过（实验2）。第三个实验排除了研究结果模式仅仅是因为对动作图片的记忆优于对动作短语的记忆的可能性（实验3）。我们将讨论我们的结果对于语言理解和动作观察模拟文献的意义。
