Are Sensory-Motor Relationships Encoded ad hoc or by Default?: An ERP Study

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Yurena Morera¹  Maartje van der Meij¹  Manuel de Vega¹  Horacio A. Barber¹ 

[1] Departamento de Psicología Cognitiva, Universidad de La Laguna;Instituto Universitario de Neurociencia, Universidad de La Laguna;Instituto de Tecnologías Biomédicas, Universidad de La Laguna;Basque Center on Cognition

关键词: semantics;    ad hoc categories;    affordances;    functional relations;    N400;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00966

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

In this event-related potentials study we tested whether sensory-motor relations between concrete words are encoded by default or only under explicit ad hoc instructions. In Exp. 1, participants were explicitly asked to encode sensory-motor relations (e.g., “do the following objects fit in a pencil-cup?”), while other possible semantic relations remained implicit. In Exp. 2, using the same materials other group of participants were explicitly asked to encode semantic relations (e.g., “are the following objects related to a pencil-cup?”), and the possible sensory-motor relations remained implicit. The N400 component was sensitive to semantic relations (e.g., “desk” related to “pencil-cup”) both under implicit (Exp. 1) and explicit instructions (Exp. 2). By contrast, most sensory-motor relations (e.g., “pea” fitting in “pencil-cup”) were encoded ad hoc under explicit instructions (Exp. 1). Interestingly some sensory-motor relations were also encoded implicitly, but only when they corresponded to “functional” actions associated with high-related objects (e.g., “eraser” fitting in “pencil-cup”) and occurring at a late time window (500–650 ms; Exp. 2), suggesting that this type of sensory-motor relations were encoding by default.

【 授权许可】

CC BY