Knob Experiment

This study addresses factors that, within the framework of embodied language processing, were previously discussed as potentially responsible for inconsistencies found in the reading-by-rotating literature (Claus, 2015). It concurrently exploits individual differences in motoric experience to explore the experiential basis of action-sentence compatibility effects. The results suggest that, when reading sentences describing actions, comprehenders reactivate differential motor traces that reflect their very individual motoric experience of the described action. As such the current study provides evidence for one of the central claims of the simulation view of language comprehension, namely that language-based mental simulations are made up of re-activated experiences that the comprehender has made in his or her past.