title: No specific role for the manual motor system in processing the meanings of words related to the hand.
abstract: The present study explored whether semantic and motor systems are functionally interwoven via the use of a dual-task paradigm. According to embodied language accounts that propose an automatic and necessary involvement of the motor system in conceptual processing, concurrent processing of hand-related information should interfere more with hand movements than processing of unrelated body-part (i.e., foot, mouth) information. Across three experiments, 100 right-handed participants performed left- or right-hand tapping movements while repeatedly reading action words related to different body-parts, or different body-part names, in both aloud and silent conditions. Concurrent reading of single words related to specific body-parts, or the same words embedded in sentences differing in syntactic and phonological complexity (to manipulate context-relevant processing), and reading while viewing videos of the actions and body-parts described by the target words (to elicit visuomotor associations) all interfered with right-hand but not left-hand tapping rate. However, this motor interference was not affected differentially by hand-related stimuli. Thus, the results provide no support for proposals that body-part specific resources in cortical motor systems are shared between overt manual movements and meaning-related processing of words related to the hand.
authors: Redcliffe-Caboolture Child and Youth Mental Health Service, Queensland Health Caboolture, QLD, Australia ; School of Psychology, University of Queensland Brisbane, QLD, Australia.
authors: Natasha
authors: N
authors: Postle
authors: Roderick
authors: R
authors: Ashton
authors: Ken
authors: K
authors: McFarland
authors: Greig I
authors: GI
authors: de Zubicaray
keywords: action representations; embodied language; motor system; word meaning
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