Out of Action? – Re-evaluating Methodological Challenges in Embodied Semantics Research
type: CreativeWork
description: Contrasting with disembodied theories of the mind, the Embodied Semantics Approach proposes that meaning inevitably needs to be grounded in action and perception. Over the last twenty years, an impressive body of evidence has been put forward in its favour. Particularly the seemingly highly reliable Action-Sentence Compatibility Effect (ACE), suggesting a congruency effect between an overt action and the action implied by a sentence, does now seem to be an agreed-upon fact of psycholinguistic research. Similarly, response time effects associated with important semantic psycholinguistic variables such as concreteness and valence have frequently been explained through the embodied grounding of semantic representations. This dissertation presents a series of challenges to apparent certainties: Whereas the theoretical discussion emphasises the need to overcome the sharp dichotomies between embodied and disembodied perspectives on cognition, Embodied and Associationist Accounts of semantics, as well as modal and amodal representations, the empirical section outlines shortcomings of different behavioural and neuroimaging approaches to the investigation of Embodied Semantics Theories, particularly in relation to the causal involvement of action, perception, and emotion systems. Even more crucially, the ACE as a key finding of the Embodied Semantics Approach as well as valence and concreteness effects have encountered serious replication issues in recent years (e.g. Papesh, 2015; Morey at al., 2022; Kousta et al., 2009; Brysbaert et al., 2016). The experimental part of this dissertation therefore considers possible design-related explanations for the observed challenges concerning these behavioural paradigms. Experiment 1 investigates whether overlapping and therefore potentially conflicting temporal and action information embodied on the same back–front spatial axis in the ACE paradigm could contribute to previous replication problems. Experiment 2 emphasises the vastly va…
abstract: Contrasting with disembodied theories of the mind, the Embodied Semantics Approach proposes that meaning inevitably needs to be grounded in action and perception. Over the last twenty years, an impressive body of evidence has been put forward in its favour. Particularly the seemingly highly reliable Action-Sentence Compatibility Effect (ACE), suggesting a congruency effect between an overt action and the action implied by a sentence, does now seem to be an agreed-upon fact of psycholinguistic research. Similarly, response time effects associated with important semantic psycholinguistic variables such as concreteness and valence have frequently been explained through the embodied grounding of semantic representations. This dissertation presents a series of challenges to apparent certainties: Whereas the theoretical discussion emphasises the need to overcome the sharp dichotomies between embodied and disembodied perspectives on cognition, Embodied and Associationist Accounts of semantics, as well as modal and amodal representations, the empirical section outlines shortcomings of different behavioural and neuroimaging approaches to the investigation of Embodied Semantics Theories, particularly in relation to the causal involvement of action, perception, and emotion systems. Even more crucially, the ACE as a key finding of the Embodied Semantics Approach as well as valence and concreteness effects have encountered serious replication issues in recent years (e.g. Papesh, 2015; Morey at al., 2022; Kousta et al., 2009; Brysbaert et al., 2016). The experimental part of this dissertation therefore considers possible design-related explanations for the observed challenges concerning these behavioural paradigms. Experiment 1 investigates whether overlapping and therefore potentially conflicting temporal and action information embodied on the same back–front spatial axis in the ACE paradigm could contribute to previous replication problems. Experiment 2 emphasises the vastly va…
author: Heine, Julia
language: eng
keywords: Embodied Semantics, Language Processing, Psycholinguistics, Embodied Language Processing, Replication Crisis, Action Language, Grounded Language Processing
license: https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/42413126-f383-4ba6-87d6-41301df5a7d3/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2022-10-03
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:04Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.100557