Scorolli, C. 1 , Daprati, E. 2 , Nico, D. 3 & Borghi, A. M. 1, 4
1 Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Italy
2 Department of Physiology, University of Rome, “Tor Vergata”, Italy
3 Department of Psychology, University of Rome, “La Sapienza”, Italy
4 4Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, CNR, Rome
According to “embodied” theories language is founded on action. This study aims to verify if words can be intended as kinds of actions. If this is the case, then word use should determine a bodily extension, similarly to tools. In the first experiment we presented participants with objects located in the peripersonal, extrapersonal and “border” space, i.e. reachable extending the arm and the back. Before and after a training session participants had to estimate the objects distances and to push a toy-car towards the objects’ location. During the “tool-yes” and “word-yes” training they used a rake or the right linguistic label to reach the far objects. In the “tool-no” and “word-no” conditions the tool and the word were not effective in accomplishing the task. Participants consciously perceived the reachable space as extended only after the “tool-yes” training; crucially analyses on the toy-car kinematics revealed a symmetric modulation also in the “word-yes” condition. In the second experiment we introduced a “switch-yes” training: participants pushed a button to reach the objects. The analogous shift on spatial representation produced by “tool”, “switch” as well as “linguistic-label” trainings argues in favour of a rearrangement of body schema determined by the social experience of language.