Unconstraining theories of embodied cognition
Section snippets
Participants
Thirty-seven students from the Erasmus University Rotterdam participated in the experiment, in return for course credit or a small monetary fee (€ 5,-). One participant, with an error rate higher than 30%, was excluded from the analysis. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the two instructions.
Stimulus materials and apparatus
Thirty-two positive and 22 negative words were selected from a normed list. The words on this list had been rated on a 7-point scale (1 = extremely negative, 7 = extremely positive) by 29
Experiment 2
Experiment 2 tested the hypothesis that participants perform the task more easily when the valence of the central word matches the items that have to be moved toward the central word. Thus, when the central word is a negative word (i.e., Hate), participants are expected to be slower in the Positive toward condition than in the Negative toward condition (i.e., the opposite pattern of Experiment 1 is predicted).
Discussion
The categorization hypothesis predicts that the categorization of words is facilitated when the valence of the central word is congruent with the valence of the words that have to be moved toward it. Most participants regard their own name as a strongly positive word (reflecting a healthy positive self-image). According to the categorization hypothesis, they should therefore respond faster when they move positive words toward their name than when they move negative words toward it. The same
Participants
Seventy-six students from the Erasmus University Rotterdam participated in the experiment, in return for course credit or a small monetary fee (€ 5,-). Five participants were excluded because their error rate was above 30%, leaving a total of 71 participants.
Materials and procedure
Experiment 3 followed the same procedure as the previous experiments, but an empty block was presented in the middle of the screen. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the two instructions. Those in the Positive toward condition
General discussion
An important issue in cognitive science regards the question to which degree sensorimotor processes are involved in cognition. In recent years, the embodied cognition view is gaining momentum, which suggests that cognition is strongly intertwined with the systems of perception and action, using representations that are directly derived from these systems (e.g., Barsalou, 1999, Glenberg, 1997, Pulvermüller, 1999). Proponents of this view often refer to the growing number of studies that
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