The Visual Consequences of Language Comprehension

Download or read book The Visual Consequences of Language Comprehension written by Alexia C. Toskos and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do we understand language? What kinds of representations do people form when hearing a story or when reading a paragraph? In this dissertation, I will explore how people make meaning out of the language that they read or hear. One possibility is that the words we read or hear engage perceptuomotor representations, and language comprehension arises from modality-specific simulation or imagery of the linguistic content. Strong versions of the modality-specific approach assume complete overlap between the representations generated by language and those generated by perception and action. Perhaps representations brought about by language only partially overlap and interact with perception and action, with clear limits, and with important differences along the continuum from concrete to abstract language. The studies presented in this dissertation aim to delineate where perception and language understanding share representations and processing resources, and where they diverge. The findings suggest that language understanding affects visuospatial processing (Chapter 2) and visual motion processing (Chapter 3), but to a lesser extent than does perception itself.