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A Brief Review on Embodied Language Comprehension

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Recently, a growing body of research in psychology, psycho-linguistics and neuroscience has posed a challenge to the traditional view of language comprehension by proposing that cognitive states are not disembodied in language comprehension. Embodied theories of cognition hold that the actual mechanisms underlying language comprehension is hypothesized to entail performing mental simulations of its content. Numerous empirical researches have emerged in support of embodied view of language comprehension. While nowadays there is no single view of embodied cognition, its theories share many characteristics and assumptions (Wilson, 2002) and one of the most influential is Barsalou’s (1999) Perceptual Symbol System, which proposes that people activate and manipulate perceptual symbols during language comprehension even when the perceptual characteristics are merely implied rather than explicitly stated. The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic review of how sensory-motor and affective processes contribute to language comprehension.
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In-Text Citation: (Wang, & Pan, 2017)
To Cite this Article: Wang, H., & Pan, Y. (2017). A Brief Review on Embodied Language Comprehension. International Journal of Academic Research in Psychology. 4(1), 30-42.