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Revisiting Mental Simulation in Language Comprehension: Six Replication Attempts

The notion of language comprehension as mental simulation has become popular in cognitive science. We revisit some of the original empirical evidence for this. Specifically, we attempted to replicate the findings from earlier studies that examined the mental simulation of object orientation, shape,...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Zwaan, Rolf A., Pecher, Diane
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3530580/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23300547
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0051382
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author Zwaan, Rolf A.
Pecher, Diane
author_facet Zwaan, Rolf A.
Pecher, Diane
author_sort Zwaan, Rolf A.
collection PubMed
description The notion of language comprehension as mental simulation has become popular in cognitive science. We revisit some of the original empirical evidence for this. Specifically, we attempted to replicate the findings from earlier studies that examined the mental simulation of object orientation, shape, and color, respectively, in sentence-picture verification. For each of these sets of findings, we conducted two web-based replication attempts using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Our results are mixed. Participants responded faster to pictures that matched the orientation or shape implied by the sentence, replicating the original findings. The effect was larger and stronger for shape than orientation. Participants also responded faster to pictures that matched the color implied by the sentence, whereas the original studies obtained mismatch advantages. We argue that these results support mental simulation theory, show the importance of replication studies, and show the viability of web-based data collection.
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spelling pubmed-35305802013-01-08 Revisiting Mental Simulation in Language Comprehension: Six Replication Attempts Zwaan, Rolf A. Pecher, Diane PLoS One Research Article The notion of language comprehension as mental simulation has become popular in cognitive science. We revisit some of the original empirical evidence for this. Specifically, we attempted to replicate the findings from earlier studies that examined the mental simulation of object orientation, shape, and color, respectively, in sentence-picture verification. For each of these sets of findings, we conducted two web-based replication attempts using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Our results are mixed. Participants responded faster to pictures that matched the orientation or shape implied by the sentence, replicating the original findings. The effect was larger and stronger for shape than orientation. Participants also responded faster to pictures that matched the color implied by the sentence, whereas the original studies obtained mismatch advantages. We argue that these results support mental simulation theory, show the importance of replication studies, and show the viability of web-based data collection. Public Library of Science 2012-12-26 /pmc/articles/PMC3530580/ /pubmed/23300547 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0051382 Text en © 2012 Zwaan, Pecher http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Zwaan, Rolf A.
Pecher, Diane
Revisiting Mental Simulation in Language Comprehension: Six Replication Attempts
title Revisiting Mental Simulation in Language Comprehension: Six Replication Attempts
title_full Revisiting Mental Simulation in Language Comprehension: Six Replication Attempts
title_fullStr Revisiting Mental Simulation in Language Comprehension: Six Replication Attempts
title_full_unstemmed Revisiting Mental Simulation in Language Comprehension: Six Replication Attempts
title_short Revisiting Mental Simulation in Language Comprehension: Six Replication Attempts
title_sort revisiting mental simulation in language comprehension: six replication attempts
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3530580/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23300547
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0051382
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