Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2016 Aug;23(4):1028-34.
doi: 10.3758/s13423-015-0864-x.

Situation models, mental simulations, and abstract concepts in discourse comprehension

Rolf A Zwaan  1
Affiliations
Review

Situation models, mental simulations, and abstract concepts in discourse comprehension

Rolf A Zwaan. Psychon Bull Rev. 2016 Aug.

Abstract

This article sets out to examine the role of symbolic and sensorimotor representations in discourse comprehension. It starts out with a review of the literature on situation models, showing how mental representations are constrained by linguistic and situational factors. These ideas are then extended to more explicitly include sensorimotor representations. Following Zwaan and Madden (2005), the author argues that sensorimotor and symbolic representations mutually constrain each other in discourse comprehension. These ideas are then developed further to propose two roles for abstract concepts in discourse comprehension. It is argued that they serve as pointers in memory, used (1) cataphorically to integrate upcoming information into a sensorimotor simulation, or (2) anaphorically integrate previously presented information into a sensorimotor simulation. In either case, the sensorimotor representation is a specific instantiation of the abstract concept.

Keywords: Abstract concepts; Embodied cognition; Language comprehension; Language/memory interactions; Mental models.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Andrews, M., Frank, S. L., & Vigliocco, G. (2014). Reconciling embodied and distributional accounts of meaning in language. Topics in Cognitive Science, 6, 359–370. - PubMed
    1. Barsalou, L. W. (1999). Perceptual symbol systems. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22, 577–660. - PubMed
    1. Barsalou LW, Wiemer-Hastings K. Situating abstract concepts. In: Pecher D, Zwaan R, editors. Grounding cognition: The role of perception and action in memory, language, and thought. New York: Cambridge University Press; 2005. pp. 129–163.
    1. Barsalou LW, Santos A, Simmons WK, Wilson CD. Language and simulation in conceptual processing. In: De Vega M, Glenberg AM, Graesser AC, editors. Symbols, embodiment, and meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2008. pp. 245–283.
    1. Boulenger V, Hauk O, Pulvermüller F. Grasping ideas with the motor system: Semantic somatotopy in idiom comprehension. Cerebral Cortex. 2009;19:1905–1914. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhn217. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources