Abstract

Studies examining visual word recognition have revealed that sensorimotor information is associated with the meaning of and influences the processing of words. In this study, we collected ratings of relative embodiment, which reflects how much physical movement is involved in a word meaning, for 219 Japanese transitive verbs. We then investigated how the ratings affect visual word recognition, using three different tasks: a word-naming task, a lexical decision task, and a syntactic classification task. We found that reaction times were faster and correct rates were higher (in the lexical decision task) for words with higher relative embodiment ratings than for those with lower ratings. These findings indicate that relative embodiment affects processing of Japanese verbs as well as of English verbs.

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