5 Discussion ................................ 25
5.1 Facilitation in the Matching Condition .................. 28
5.2 Interference in the Mismatching Condition .......................... 29
5.3 Embodied Effect in Language Comprehension ....................... 29
5 Discussion
5.1 Facilitation in the Matching Condition
The finding of a processing advantage for action-verb metaphor comprehension in the matching prime condition is in consistent with previous studies [21, 83]. Behavioral results in the present study supported the embodied effect in action-verb metaphor comprehension even at the phrasal level as RTs in the matching prime condition were shorter than those in no-prime condition which is in line with previous studies, further favoring the embodied view, but rejecting the amodal view. That means, even the metaphoric meaning of action verbs contains the action content which can activate sensorimotor systems [72], thus the activated sensorimotor systems in this study can promote subsequent action-verb metaphor comprehension. And the icons adopted in the present study helped avoid the lexical priming effect and the analyses of the post-test verified that the observed promoted comprehension in the matching condition was not a result of lexical priming effect, supporting the involvement of sensorimotor systems in action-verb metaphor comprehension.
EC emphasizes the importance of body in language processing, implying that language processing is based on our current or previous physical interactions with the outside world, which would be simulated in later comprehension. Physical experiences come from the interaction with the physical world, in which sensorimotor systems play a significant role in the process of the interactive activities. The interaction between our bodily experience and environment can guide us how to think through sensory and motor simulations required by situations. From the embodied perspective, language is not a system of arbitrary symbols and not all symbols are retrieved from the semantic network in mind directly. Barsalou reported that EC didn’t deny the function of the abstract system (i.e., the linguistic system), the author emphasized the role of sensorimotor systems assisted by the linguistic system [1]. In terms of the weak embodied theory (i.e., LASS), in deeper comprehension, people will depend more on sensorimotor systems, while in superficial tasks, people will depend more on the linguistic system. As to this view, due to the comprehension task in the present study, participants depended more on sensorimotor systems. Therefore, the facilitation can be observed in the matching condition even in action-verb metaphor comprehension.
6 Conclusions
6.1 Major Findings
The present research chose action-verb metaphors describing a conflict between action verbs and objects as&nb
