‘Soundless answer. Firm safety.’ ERPs showing perceptual simulation since actual 160 ms (Bernabeu, Willems, & Louwerse, in prep.)

Files: experiment overview; stimuli; EEG montage used; waveforms; difference topographies, critical statistics; fixed effects of final models; entire modeling; raw data. For a detailed view of the waveforms per group and electrode, see https://pablobernabeu.shinyapps.io/export_files/.The entire data set is available at https://osf.io/97unm/.<b>Abstract. </b>Sensory-motor systems become active during conceptual processing, but the precise relevance of it is not clear. For perceptual simulation to occur, those systems would have to contribute to the core of conceptual processing. In studying this, the earlier stages of word comprehension can be most revealing. We thus conducted an event-related potential (ERP) experiment that implemented the conceptual modality switch paradigm. In each trial, participants judged whether a property word could describe a concept word. Yet, the critical manipulation was the conceptual modality of successive trials (as enabled by modality-normed stimuli). Previous experiments have shown that the transition across trials in different modalities—e.g., haptic to visual—incurs a switching cost, relative to maintaining the same modality—e.g., visual to visual. Those experiments measured ERPs time-locked to the last word of target trials, and then response times. By contrast, we time-locked ERPs to the first word of target trials in order to measure any switching costs from the start, and also to reduce confound influence on the target word. The experiment featured different types of switch—one from auditory to visual, and one from haptic to visual—, which were compared to the non-switch—visual to visual. Further, there was a Quick group (<i>n</i> = 21) and a Self-paced group (<i>n</i> = 21), alongside a few participants without speed instructions (<i>n</i> = 5). ERP effects appeared in four typical time windows from 160 and 750 ms after word onset. The overall effect is characterized by a negativity for modality-switching relative to not switching, and it increases over time. Further, it arises with both types of switch, and influences both participant groups within anterior and posterior brain regions. These results indicate that sensory systems may be engaged as soon as a word is recognized, which underscores the plausibility of perceptual simulation.<b></b><b></b><b></b>ReferencesCollins, J., Pecher, D., Zeelenberg, R., &amp; Coulson, S. (2011). Modality switching in a property verification task: an ERP study of what happens when candles flicker after high heels click. <i>Frontiers in Psychology, 2.</i>Hald, L. A., Marshall, J.-A., Janssen, D. P., &amp; Garnham, A. (2011). Switching modalities in a sentence verification task: ERP evidence for embodied language processing. <i>Frontiers in Psychology, 2.</i> Hauk, O. (2016). Only time will tell—Why temporal information is essential for our neuroscientific understanding of semantics. <i>Psychonomic Bulletin &amp; Review, 23</i>.<i></i>Mahon, B.Z., &amp; Hickok, G. (2016). Arguments about the nature of concepts: Symbols, embodiment, and beyond. <em>Psychonomic Bulletin &amp; Review, 23, </em>941-958.