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Pupillary Responses to Words That Convey a Sense of Brightness or Darkness
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 predictio...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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SAGE Publications
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5549816/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28613135 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797617702699 |
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author | Mathôt, Sebastiaan Grainger, Jonathan Strijkers, Kristof |
author_facet | Mathôt, Sebastiaan Grainger, Jonathan Strijkers, Kristof |
author_sort | Mathôt, Sebastiaan |
collection | PubMed |
description | 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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5549816 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | SAGE Publications |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-55498162017-08-23 Pupillary Responses to Words That Convey a Sense of Brightness or Darkness Mathôt, Sebastiaan Grainger, Jonathan Strijkers, Kristof Psychol Sci Research Articles 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. SAGE Publications 2017-06-14 2017-08 /pmc/articles/PMC5549816/ /pubmed/28613135 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797617702699 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
spellingShingle | Research Articles Mathôt, Sebastiaan Grainger, Jonathan Strijkers, Kristof Pupillary Responses to Words That Convey a Sense of Brightness or Darkness |
title | Pupillary Responses to Words That Convey a Sense of Brightness or
Darkness |
title_full | Pupillary Responses to Words That Convey a Sense of Brightness or
Darkness |
title_fullStr | Pupillary Responses to Words That Convey a Sense of Brightness or
Darkness |
title_full_unstemmed | Pupillary Responses to Words That Convey a Sense of Brightness or
Darkness |
title_short | Pupillary Responses to Words That Convey a Sense of Brightness or
Darkness |
title_sort | pupillary responses to words that convey a sense of brightness or
darkness |
topic | Research Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5549816/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28613135 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797617702699 |
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