Web-based investigation of language-space associations

According to the experiential-simulations view of language comprehension (Zwaan & Madden, 2005), we comprehend the meaning of words by re-activating sensorimotor experiences that are associated with the word's referent. The work of Lachmair, Dudschig, De Filippis, de la Vega, and Kaup (2011, Experiment 2) provides positive evidence for this claim with respect to spatial experiences, indicating that the associated location of a referent in vertical space is automatically re-activated upon hearing or reading the corresponding word. Their participants responded to words such as "bird" or "worm" (that are associated with an upper or lower vertical location, respectively) by performing an upward or downward hand movement depending on the font color of the words. Responses were faster when the hand movement matched the referent's associated vertical position. In several experiments, we aimed at developing an online paradigm for replicating these findings. Instead of a vertical response device we used standard keyboard and mouse responses.