Conceptual knowledge accessed by language may involve the reactivation of the associated primary sensory-motor processes. Whether these embodied representations are indeed constitutive to conceptual knowledge is hotly debated, particularly since direct evidence that sensory-motor expertise can improve conceptual processing is scarce. In this study, we sought for this crucial piece of evidence, by training naive healthy subjects to perform complex manual actions and by measuring, before and after training, their performance in a semantic language task. Nineteen participants engaged in 3 weeks of motor training. Each participant was trained in three complex manual actions (e.g., origami). Before and after the training period, each subject underwent a series of manual dexterity tests and a semantic language task. The latter consisted of a sentence-picture semantic congruency judgment task, with 6 target congruent sentence-picture pairs (semantically related to the trained manual actions), 6 non-target congruent pairs (semantically unrelated), and 12 filler incongruent pairs. Manual action training induced a significant improvement in all manual dexterity tests, demonstrating the successful acquisition of sensory-motor expertise. In the semantic language task, the reaction times (RTs) to both target and non-target congruent sentence-picture pairs decreased after action training, indicating a more efficient conceptual-semantic processing. Noteworthy, the RTs for target pairs decreased more than those for non-target pairs, as indicated by the 2 × 2 interaction. These results were confirmed when controlling for the potential bias of increased frequency of use of target lexical items during manual training. The results of the present study suggest that sensory-motor expertise gained by training of specific manual actions can lead to an improvement of cognitive-linguistic skills related to the specific conceptual-semantic domain associated to the trained actions.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 30 May 2013.
All research outputs
#15,150,463
of 26,552,141 outputs
Outputs from Frontiers in Psychology
#13,570
of 35,493 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#158,574
of 254,868 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in Psychology
#209
of 481 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 26,552,141 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 42nd percentile – i.e., 42% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 35,493 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 13.9. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 61% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 254,868 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 37th percentile – i.e., 37% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 481 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 56% of its contemporaries.
