Abstract for Roger Wales's talk

Revisiting verbs of motion
Roger Wales (La Trobe University)
October 17, 2006 (Tuesday)
6:30 PM - ; Room 7102, The CUNY Graduate Center

Verbs of motion have been central to discussions as to how language differences influence cognition. This study examines some of these issues in an experimental context where some simple English verbs were performed by actors and recorded using a 3-dimensional infrared system. These verbs were organized into a computer screen presentation ('point-light displays') and presented to participants to make force-choice judgments of what verb the performance represented. Temporal and structural analyses into the salient features of the actors' performances of all verbs was conducted, and general descriptions of each verb were compiled based on their prominent characteristics. These definitions were used as a means for comparison of incorrect judgments. Results show that the verbs for which errors are made have a number of overlapping structural characteristics. Additionally, the verbs with the highest number of errors had characteristics more in line with the incorrectly chosen verb than with the verb intended by the actor. This suggests that reliable information about the nature and content of lexical interpretations of action verbs is available in the actions used to perform them.

The study was then extended, using the same displays, with a small cohort of native Spanish speakers who produced much the same pattern of responses as the English speakers, despite the pronounced typological differences between the two languages. The relevance of this to our understanding of how meanings in language are expressed and understood thus needs discussion!

Recent applications of this paradigm to samples of moderate Alzheimer's patients raise questions about some of the features which underlie the processing mechanisms involved.