Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Look but don't touch
T2 - tactile disadvantage in processing modality-specific words
AU - Connell, Louise
AU - Lynott, Dermot
PY - 2010/4
Y1 - 2010/4
N2 - Recent neuroimaging research has shown that perceptual and conceptual processing share a common, modality-specific neural substrate, while work on modality switching costs suggests that they share some of the same attentional mechanisms. In three experiments, we employed a modality detection task that displayed modality-specific object properties (e.g., unimodal shrill, warm, crimson, or bimodal jagged, fluffy) for extremely short display times and asked participants to judge whether each property corresponded to a particular target modality (e.g., auditory, gustatory, tactile, olfactory, visual). Results show that perceptual and conceptual processing share a tactile disadvantage: people are less accurate in detecting expected information regarding the sense of touch than any other modality. These findings support embodied assertions that the conceptual system uses the perceptual system for the purposes of representation. We suggest that the tactile disadvantage emerges for linguistic stimuli due to the evolutionary adaptation of endogenous attention to incoming sensory stimuli.
AB - Recent neuroimaging research has shown that perceptual and conceptual processing share a common, modality-specific neural substrate, while work on modality switching costs suggests that they share some of the same attentional mechanisms. In three experiments, we employed a modality detection task that displayed modality-specific object properties (e.g., unimodal shrill, warm, crimson, or bimodal jagged, fluffy) for extremely short display times and asked participants to judge whether each property corresponded to a particular target modality (e.g., auditory, gustatory, tactile, olfactory, visual). Results show that perceptual and conceptual processing share a tactile disadvantage: people are less accurate in detecting expected information regarding the sense of touch than any other modality. These findings support embodied assertions that the conceptual system uses the perceptual system for the purposes of representation. We suggest that the tactile disadvantage emerges for linguistic stimuli due to the evolutionary adaptation of endogenous attention to incoming sensory stimuli.
KW - SYSTEMS
KW - Conceptual processing
KW - LANGUAGE
KW - Embodied cognition
KW - Language comprehension
KW - BRAIN-REGIONS
KW - Perceptual modality
KW - ATTENTION
KW - Features
KW - Properties
KW - DESIGNS
KW - Endogenous attention
KW - EVENTS
KW - COGNITION
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=77249147354&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.cognition.2009.10.005
DO - 10.1016/j.cognition.2009.10.005
M3 - Journal article
VL - 115
SP - 1
EP - 9
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
SN - 0010-0277
IS - 1
ER -