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Are judgments for action verbs and point-light human actions equivalent?

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Abstract

The aim of the present study was to examine whether the ability to judge action words and the ability to judge human actions share common mechanisms. With this purpose in mind, we proposed both a lexical and an action decision task to twenty-four healthy participants. For both tasks, the participants had to judge whether the stimulus that was presented (a letter string or a point-light sequence) was valid or not (i.e. a word vs. a pseudo-word, an action vs. a pseudo-action). The data analysis showed that the action decision task has common characteristics with the lexical decision task. As for verbal material, judgements of pseudo-actions were slower than judgements for actions. Moreover, we demonstrated that the ability to judge an action verb was positively correlated with the ability to judge a point-light human action, whereas no significant correlation appeared between nouns and point-light judgements abilities. This dissociation supports the argument that the judgement of action words and the judgement of human actions share a common but specific basis through the involvement of motor representations.

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Fig. 1
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Fig. 3

Notes

  1. The analysis with all items (19 nouns, 19 verbs and 15 point-light actions) gave the same principal effects and interactions concerning our hypotheses.

  2. Note that nonparametric correlation (Spearman’s correlation) gave exactly the same results.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Mathilde Vinel, who helped us to build the stimuli and recruit the participants and Arnaud Badets for his helpful comments.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre de recherches sur la cognition et l’apprentissage, UMR 7295-CNRS, CeRCA/MSHS, Université de Poitiers, Bâtiment A5, 5, rue Théodore Lefebvre, TSA 21103, 86073, Poitiers Cedex 9, France

    Christel Bidet-Ildei & Lucette Toussaint

Authors
  1. Christel Bidet-Ildei
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  2. Lucette Toussaint
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christel Bidet-Ildei.

Appendices

Appendix 1

Detailed list of the words used in the lexical decision task. English translation of each word appeared in brackets. The imageability was directly assessed by the participants at the end of the experiment. The motor-relatedness was assessed by an independent group of 37 adults (18 men, 19 women, mean age = 40.62 ± 11.03 years). On the basis of motor-relatedness analysis, words written in bold italics have been removed from the final analysis to equalize the number of words and actions used. As we are particularly interested by accentuating the difference of motor-relatedness between word categories (i.e. between nouns and verbs), we removed the four verbs with the lowest motor-relatedness and the four nouns with the highest motor-relatedness scores.

Word

Pseudo-word

Type

Frequency

Nb of letters

Nb of syllables

Imageability

Motor-relatedness

Araignée (spider)

agnairée

Noun

18.20

8

3

1.38

1.19

Armée (Army)

émare

Noun

101.07

5

2

2.13

1.70

Bâtiment (building)

bamitent

Noun

27.58

8

3

1.8

1.19

Bottine (boot)

bittone

Noun

2.27

7

2

2.08

1.49

Bureau (desk)

rubeau

Noun

167.13

6

2

1.54

1.27

Casque (helmet)

quesca

Noun

15.42

6

1

1.67

1.27

Citron (lemon)

cotrin

Noun

10.92

6

2

1.29

1.11

Cochon (pig)

chocon

Noun

31.18

6

2

1.29

1.14

Copain (friend)

capoin

Noun

158.62

6

2

2.13

1.16

Épée (sword)

éphée

Noun

32.81

5

2

1.42

1.86

Étudiant (student)

éduitant

Noun

38.07

8

3

2.21

1.38

Guitare (guitar)

gaiture

Noun

13.86

8

2

1.38

1.78

Haricot (bean)

hiracot

Noun

8.85

7

3

1.46

1.05

Madame (Mrs)

mamade

Noun

307.36

6

2

2.04

1.11

Magasin (shop)

gamasin

Noun

60.62

7

3

1.92

1.16

Million (million)

mililon

Noun

124.70

7

2

2.83

1.05

Piscine (swimming - pool)

pisucine

Noun

23.62

7

2

1.33

1.70

Sablier (timer)

sibaler

Noun

1.18

7

3

1.83

1.57

Sorcier (witch)

socrier

Noun

54.09

7

2

2.42

1.19

Balancer (swing)

banlacer

Verb

40.12

8

3

1.96

4.54

Balayer (sweep)

labayer

Verb

12.17

7

3

1.58

4.92

Boiter (limp)

Bioter

Verb

15.43

6

2

2.21

4.1

Caresser (stroke)

cerasser

Verb

15.69

8

3

1.88

4.86

Couper (cut off)

Copuer

Verb

155.82

6

2

1.79

4.95

Creuser (dig)

Ceruser

Verb

25.11

7

2

1.96

4.96

Cueillir (pick)

Ceilluir

Verb

13.84

8

2

1.88

4.89

Déchirer (tear)

Dichérer

Verb

26.46

8

3

1.83

4.86

Écrire (write)

Ercire

Verb

305.92

6

2

1.71

4.84

Fumer (smoke)

mufer

Verb

98.49

5

2

1.5

4.11

Lâcher (drop)

lancher

Verb

171.08

6

2

2.04

4.57

Nager (swim)

ganer

Verb

30.36

5

2

1.38

4.86

Peigner (comb)

pengier

Verb

2.25

7

2

1.79

4.89

Pincer (pinch)

pinocer

Verb

10.84

6

2

1.80

4.92

Pivoter (rotate)

Poviter

Verb

1.19

7

3

1.96

4.78

Pousser (push)

pusoser

Verb

125.61

7

2

1.58

4.84

Reculer (Step back)

ruceler

Verb

52.15

7

3

1.63

4.84

Sourire (smile)

Soruire

Verb

53.97

7

2

1.42

3.94

Verser (spill)

Vreser

Verb

31.20

6

2

1.96

4.84

Appendix 2

Detailed list of human actions used in the experiment.

Action

Description

View

Time duration (ms)

Baseball throw

A man carrying a baseball and throwing it leftward

Profile

550

Cartwheel

A man doing a cartwheel to the left

Three quarters

1,800

Crawl

A man crawling

Profile

1,650

Dancing

A man dancing salsa

Three quarters

2,300

Iatatex

A man giving a kick forward

Three quarters

1,525

Jumping jack

A man jumping with his arms and legs opening and closing

Front

1,475

Karate kick

A man giving a kick with a translation to the left

Three quarters

1,450

Pick up

A man bending down to pick something up

Three quarters

1,800

Place kick

A man kicking a ball with a rightward translation

Three quarters

1,900

Push

A man pushing something to his left

Front

1,725

Push-up

A man doing push-ups

Profile

2,075

Run

A man running (leftward direction) as if on a treadmill

Profile

1,800

Sit down

A man beginning to sit

Three quarters

1,375

Twist

A man doing a twist

Front

1,875

Walk

A man walking (leftward direction) as if on a treadmill

Profile

1,950

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Bidet-Ildei, C., Toussaint, L. Are judgments for action verbs and point-light human actions equivalent?. Cogn Process 16, 57–67 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-014-0634-0

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