Emotive concept-nouns and motor responses: Attraction or repulsion?

Two experiments investigate whether the triadic interaction between objects, ourselves and other agents modulates the motor system activation during language comprehension. Participants were presented with a sentence formed by a descriptive part referring to an emotional connoted object (positive, negative) and an action part composed of an imperative verb implying a motion toward the self or toward another person (e.g., “The object is nice/ugly. Bring it toward yourself/Give it to another person”). Participants judged whether each sentence made sense by moving the mouse toward or away from their body. Results show that the direction of the performed movement is influenced by the direction of the motion implied by the sentence and by the stimuli valence. More crucially, stimulus valence had a different impact depending on the relational context described by the sentence (action involving another agent or just oneself). Implications of the results for theories of social cognition are discussed.