The Role of Perception in Language Comprehension

In ”Language Comprehenders Mentally Represent the Shapes of Objects Represent the Shapes of Objects,” Rolf A. Zwaan and colleagues hypothesized that perceptual symbols are frequently engaged in the process of understanding language. In the field of cognitive science, a number of studies have been conducted in order to address the phenomenon associated with language comprehension, and new ideas have been put forth, including one proposing that lexical decisions are formed based on simulation of perceptual experience. A new phenomenon known as the action-sentence compatibility effect (ACE) was also discovered by Glenberg and Kaschak in their paper ”Grounding language in action”. The researchers found that language understanding is grounded in bodily action, further illustrating the idea that at least some language comprehension is similar to this since language was probably developed to facilitate the coordination of actions. While there has been some discussion of a perceptual approach to language understanding in the past, it has not addressed the theoretical and empirical implications of such a perspective, nor has it addressed the concept of embodied language processing. An important contribution of this literature review is that it provides an updated version of previous work in cognitive science, shedding more light on the role attributed to perception in language comprehension, as well as on the empirical and theoretical implications of the role attributed to perception. This literature study, in addition to being of use to researchers and academics, may prove to be of practical benefit to anyone seeking knowledge regarding the function that the motor system plays in language understanding