Playing on the typewriter, typing on the piano: manipulation knowledge of objects.
Two experiments investigated sensory/motor-based functional knowledge of man-made objects: manipulation features associated with the actual usage of objects. In Experiment 1, a series of prime-target pairs was presented auditorily, and participants were asked to make a lexical decision on the target word. Participants made a significantly faster decision about the target word (e.g. 'typewriter') following a related prime that shared manipulation features with the target (e.g. 'piano') than an unrelated prime (e.g. 'blanket'). In Experiment 2, participants' eye movements were monitored when they viewed a visual display on a computer screen while listening to a concurrent auditory input. Participants were instructed to simply identify the auditory input and touch the corresponding object on the computer display. Participants fixated an object picture (e.g. "typewriter") related to a target word (e.g. 'piano') significantly more often than an unrelated object picture (e.g. "bucket") as well as a visually matched control (e.g. "couch"). Results of the two experiments suggest that manipulation knowledge of words is retrieved without conscious effort and that manipulation knowledge constitutes a part of the lexical-semantic representation of objects.
Myung
Jong-Yoon
JY
Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Box 1978, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA. jong-yoon_myung@brown.edu
Blumstein
Sheila E
SE
Sedivy
Julie C
JC
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001244:Association; D003463:Cues; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005133:Eye Movements; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D019359:Knowledge; D008297:Male; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time; D012660:Semantics; D013067:Speech Perception; D014796:Visual Perception