title: Musical metaphors: evidence for a spatial grounding of non-literal sentences describing auditory events.
abstract: This study investigated whether the spatial terms high and low, when used in sentence contexts implying a non-literal interpretation, trigger similar spatial associations as would have been expected from the literal meaning of the words. In three experiments, participants read sentences describing either a high or a low auditory event (e.g., The soprano sings a high aria vs. The pianist plays a low note). In all Experiments, participants were asked to judge (yes/no) whether the sentences were meaningful by means of up/down (Experiments 1 and 2) or left/right (Experiment 3) key press responses. Contrary to previous studies reporting that metaphorical language understanding differs from literal language understanding with regard to simulation effects, the results show compatibility effects between sentence implied pitch height and response location. The results are in line with grounded models of language comprehension proposing that sensory motor experiences are being elicited when processing literal as well as non-literal sentences.
authors.affiliation: University of Tübingen, Germany. Electronic address: Sibylla.Wolter@uni-tuebingen.de.
authors.forename: Sibylla
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wolter
authors.affiliation: University of Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Carolin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Dudschig
authors.affiliation: University of Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Irmgard
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: de la Vega
authors.affiliation: University of Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Barbara
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Kaup
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D019365:Metaphor; D009146:Music; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D011932:Reading; D065855:Spatial Processing / Q000502:physiology*; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Embodied cognition; Literal vs. non-literal language; Metaphors; Spatial processing