Differential Aging Effects in Embodied Processing of Chinese Body-Driven and Environment-Driven Action Verbs

Previous research has highlighted the embodied nature of lexicosemantic processing, but the embodied aging of lexicosemantic processing remains largely unresolved. The present study, utilizing a semantic categorization task which capitalized on two types of contrasting action verbs, namely, the body-driven and environment-driven action verbs across two age groups, examined lexicosemantic aging as well as the role of embodiment in lexicosemantic aging. Results turned out that aging effects occurred to both types of action verbs indeed, but the body-driven action verbs, compared to environment-driven action verbs exhibited a lower vulnerability to aging. Differential Aging Effects in Embodied Processing of Chinese Body-Driven and Environment-Driven Action Verbs Meng Jiang* 12, Yuli Hao 3, Ting Cao* 34, Qinqin Wu 3 1 College of Language Intelligence (College of General Education) / Language & Brain Research Center, Sichuan International Studies University, Chongqing, China 2 Chongqing Shapingba District International Joint Institute of Brain Computer Language Interface, Chongqing, China 3 School of English Studies / Language & Brain Research Center, Sichuan International Studies University, Chongqing, China 4 School of Foreign Languages and Literature, Chongqing Normal University, Chongqing, China *, corresponding author Meng Jiang College of Language Intelligence (College of General Education) / Language & Brain Research Center, Sichuan International Studies University, Chongqing, China E-mail: [email protected] ORCID ID: 0000-0002-0650-7895 Ting Cao School of English Studies / Language & Brain Research Center Sichuan International Studies University Chongqing, China E-mail: [email protected] ORCID ID: 0009-0006-3416-1349 Differential Aging Effects in Embodied Processing of Chinese Body-Driven and Environment-Driven Action Verbs

Previous research has highlighted the embodied nature of lexicosemantic processing, but the embodied aging of lexicosemantic processing remains largely unresolved. The present study, utilizing a semantic categorization task which capitalized on two types of contrasting action verbs, namely, the body-driven and environment-driven action verbs across two age groups , examined lexicosemantic aging as well as the role of embodiment in lexicosemantic aging. Results turned out that aging effects occurred to both types of action verbs indeed, but the body-driven action verbs, compared to environment-driven action verbs exhibited a lower vulnerability to aging. Key words: Embodied cognition, Lexicosemantic processing, Aging effect, Action words

Embodied cognition and action language comprehension The theory of embodied cognition suggests that human cognition is deeply rooted in the sensorimotor system (Barsalou, 1999). Cognitive processes depend on the activation of sensory and motor representations (Gallese & Lakoff, 2005). Specifically, with regard to language processing, it suggests that semantic knowledge relies upon sensorimotor representations and that retrieving this semantic knowledge requires neural systems that are involved in the actual execution of the action (Buccino et al., 2005; Pulvermüller, 2005). Therefore, action word processing could depend on the activation of motor processes that are involved in the actual performance of these actions (Aziz-Zadeh et al., 2006). A growing body of evidence supports the embodied view of action language comprehension. Behavioral studies have provided compelling evidence. For example, Glenberg and Kaschak (2002) showed that hand movements toward or away from the body were facilitated by sentences describing a congruent action (e.g., “He opened/closed the drawer,” respectively), compared to when the arm movement was incongruent with the sentence. Similarly, Zwaan and Taylor (2006) found that sentences describing manual rotation (e.g., He turned down/up the volume) facilitated the manual rotation of a knob (to the left/right, respectively). In turn, manual rotation of the knob facilitated the reading of sentences that implied a congruent rotation. Furthermore, Liepelt et al. (2012) observed that participants were faster to say “open” according to a color of a square when this square was presented with a picture of an open hand and faster to say “close” with a picture of a closed hand. Neuroimaging studies further reveal that action language processing activates modality-specific brain regions involved in action execution and perception (Binder & Desai, 2011; Kemmerer, 2015). This activation shows systematic somatotopic organization: reading leg-related words (e.g., “kick”) activates dorsal motor regions, hand-related words (e.g., “grasp”) activates medio-dorsal regions, and face-related words (e.g., “lick”) activates ventral regions (Hauk et al., 2004; Tettamanti et al., 2005). Critically, these activations overlap with regions engaged during actual action execution and observation (Aziz-Zadeh et al., 2006), suggesting shared neural mechanisms for action language comprehension and motor processing. Findings from clinical populations further substantiate the presumed causal link between motor systems and action language processing. It is reasoned that if parts of the motor circuit of the brain are crucial to understanding action language, at least some types of deficits in the motor system should lead to difficulties in comprehending action language. Fernandino et al. (2013) made a comparison of Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients and healthy controls on action verb and abstract verb processing. It was found that compared to healthy controls, PD patients performed worse on action verbs than abstract verbs, reflecting impairment in comprehending action language that corresponds with their motor system dysfunction. Similarly, Cardona et al. (2014) found that the action-sentence compatibility effect (ACE) was abolished in early PD patients, but preserved in patients with peripheral motor deficits. This dissociation demonstrates that brain motor circuits, not peripheral motor function, are causally linked to action language processing. The lack of an ACE effect in PD has been shown to be directly related to impairments in brain motor areas, including disrupted basal ganglia function, aberrant frontotemporal connectivity, and overall volume of basal ganglia atrophy (Melloni et al., 2015). Furthermore, in a study by Speed et al. (2017), PD patients and healthy controls were asked to judge which of the two verbs initially presented was most similar to a target word, with the verbs denoting fast, slow, or static actions. It was shown that PD patients made longer reaction times in processing fast action verbs compared to slow action verbs, particularly for hand-related actions, compared to healthy controls. These findings underscore the critical link between motor system and action language processing. However, while most studies focused on this embodied nature of action language processing, few studies were dedicated to examining how embodied semantic processing changes with age. 1.2 Embodied cognition and language aging Embodied cognition seems to be a natural fit for gerontology, as aging typically manifests as concurrent physical and cognitive changes (Roberts & Allen, 2016). Older adults suffer from a range of changes to the body and action systems including height decreases, postural changes, decreased bone density, and increased bone fragility (DiPietro, 2001). The muscular system also undergoes significant declines with advanced age (Metter et al., 1999), marked by reductions in muscle mass, strength, and mobility (Visser et al., 2002). These bodily changes are matched by decreases in motor function (cf., Seidler et al., 2011), with older adults exhibiting slower motor responsiveness (Falkenstein et al., 2006), more variable and slower physical movements (Mau-Moeller et al., 2013), and decreased gait speed (Studenski et al., 2011). Mobility is decreased in older adults (Tinetti, 1986), and physical actions are complicated by declines in balance control (Laughton et al., 2003). Since simulation theories propose that the brain structures normally used for executing actions are also used to simulate these actions internally (Jeannerod, 2001; Blampain et al.,2018), these age-related physical changes may affect not only actual movement execution but also the ability to mentally simulate actions. Indeed, several studies have demonstrated that older people have difficulty executing motion simulation (Gabbard et al., 2011; Mulder et al., 2007; Personnier et al., 2010; Personnier et al., 2010; Personnier et al., 2008; Saimpont et al., 2010, 2009; Skoura et al., 2005, 2008). For example, Gabbard et al. (2011) asked young and older adults to declare whether a target was within their arm’ s reach after mentally simulating the action. Older adults overestimated their reach compared to young adults, which may reflect age-related deficits in brain regions critical to motor imagery (Munzert et al., 2009). Using a mental chronometry paradigm to compare executed and imagined gait, Personnier et al. (2010) demonstrated that older people systematically overestimated imagined gait in comparison with executed gait, suggesting that motor imagery becomes less accurate with aging. Using a hand laterality task (Cooper & Shepard, 1975), Saimpont et al. (2009) have shown that the performances of older people declined compared to younger people, suggesting that implicit use of motor simulation is impaired with aging. Saimpont et al. (2010) found that older subjects performed more poorly than their younger counterparts in both success rate and response time when mentally simulating and planning a “rising from the floor” sequence, suggesting age-related decline in action simulation, particularly when mentally simulating complex sequential whole-body movements. Given that action language processing depends on the motor system-executed simulation of sensorimotor experiences, the age-related decline in motor simulation capabilities is likely to impact on the comprehension of action language. This raises two critical questions: (1) Does aging really impact action language processing? (2) To what extent is older adults’ ability to process action verbs modulated by the embodiment of action language? While language remains relatively stable compared to other cognitive domains during aging, a growing body of research highlights a decline in lexical access and semantic processing among older adults. These deficits are not uniform but manifest in distinct aspects of language production and comprehension (Burke & Shafto, 2008; Shafto & Tyler, 2014), often linked to underlying changes in cognitive and neural functions associated with aging. A primary manifestation is difficulty retrieving names of people, places, and objects (Connor et al., 2004; Nicholas et al., 1997), along with increased tip-of-the-tongue experiences, the feeling of knowing what they want to say but without being able to say it (Burke et al., 1991; Gollan & Brown, 2006). These TOT experiences not only reflect declines in the accessibility of lexical representations but may also indicate weakened connections between semantic knowledge and phonological output systems. Empirical studies have demonstrated that these lexical challenges become progressively pronounced with age. For instance, Verhaegen and Poncelet (2013) investigated age-related changes in naming and semantic abilities among 120 participants divided into four age groups (25-35, 50-59, 60-69, and above 70 years). Using picture naming tasks, odd/even judgment tasks, and semantic assessments, they found that naming difficulties emerged progressively: participants in their 50s showed slower naming speeds but maintained accuracy, those in their 60s showed both decreased accuracy and speed, while those above 70 demonstrated the most severe impairments in both naming and semantic abilities. The nature of these deficits extends beyond simple naming tasks. Older adults also show difficulties in tasks requiring deeper semantic processing. For example, Boudiaf et al. (2018) found that older adults made slower reaction times in both picture naming and semantic categorization tasks as compared to young adults. After controlling for general cognitive slowing, the older adults showed greater age-related decline in semantic categorization task than in picture naming task. Moreover, Issa et al. (2022) found that older adults showed significantly slower reaction times and poorer accuracy when naming semantically related pictures compared to unrelated ones, while younger adults performed similarly across both conditions, suggesting a lexical-semantic decline for older adults. However, not all research evidenced age-related decline in lexical processing. Recent studies suggest that words closely tied to sensorimotor experiences may exhibit resistance to age-related decline. Reifegerste et al. (2021), for example, through three experiments across different languages, found that motor-related nouns were relatively preserved in older adults compared to non-motor nouns. In Dutch lexical decision tasks, older adults showed slowing only for non-motor nouns. In German lexical decision, age-related slowing was less pronounced for motor words. In English picture naming, accuracy declined only for non-motor nouns. These findings suggest that while lexicosemantic processing generally declines with age, certain semantic categories, particularly those nouns related to motor actions, may be relatively preserved from this decline. In our perspective, different lexical semantic categories may differ in the magnitude of embodiment they carry. Words with a high degree of embodiment—those that rely heavily on sensorimotor systems—are likely to have deeper neural representations rooted in sensorimotor experiences. These words, being more conceptually entrenched, may be more resistant to age-related decline. Conversely, less embodied words, which rely more on abstract semantic networks (Abbassi et al., 2015), may be more vulnerable to the effects of aging. In other words, embodiment might play a modulating role in lexicosemantic aging. Together, these findings, on the one hand, accentuate the necessity to further address the issue of whether or not lexicosemantic processing is vulnerable to aging. On the other hand, they highlight the need to examine whether or not embodiment has a role in modulating lexicosemantic processing as well as its aging. 1.3 The present study Building on the theoretical framework of embodied cognition and its implications for language aging, the present study delved into the aging of lexicosemantic processing as well as the effect of embodiment on lexicosemantic aging by employing two categories of action verbs and recruiting two age groups (young and elderly adults). In the study, the two age groups were instructed to complete a semantic categorization task, determining whether the target words referred to actions involving human body parts or not. The two categories of action verbs involved in the task were body-driven action verbs and environment-driven action verbs. It was anticipated that, given the fundamental role of embodied simulation in language processing and the documented age-related decline in sensorimotor systems, older adults would encounter greater difficulties in processing the environment-driven action verbs compared to body-driven action verbs. This is because body-driven action verbs are more heavily grounded in sensorimotor systems, creating stronger and more deeply entrenched conceptual representations that may provide resilience against age-related decline. In contrast, environment-driven action verbs rely more on abstract semantic networks, which are less supported by sensorimotor reinforcement and may therefore be more susceptible to aging. Besides, given the possible modulation role of embodiment in lexicosemantic processing, it was anticipated that both age groups would exhibit a differentiation effect in processing the two types of action verbs. 2.1 Participants Sample size determination was performed a priori using G*Power 3.1 (Faul et al., 2007). The analysis revealed that a sample size of 50 participants, divided equally into two groups (n = 25 per group), is necessary to detect a medium effect size (f = 0.25, as per Cohen, 1969) with a statistical power of 80% for a repeated measures within-between ANOVA design. The parameters for the calculation included a significance level of α = 0.05, two groups, and a factorial structure of 2×2, resulting in four measurements. To account for possible exclusions, a total of 64 participants were recruited in this experiment, divided equally into two age groups: 32 young adults and 32 elderly adults. The young adults, with an age range between 18 and 34 years (M = 22.61; SD = 3.83), are all students from Sichuan International Studies University (SISU). The elderly adults, with an age range between 65 and 94 years (M = 72.77; SD = 6.96), were all retired teachers or ex-staff also from SISU or nearby community. All participants were free from a history of psychiatric or neurological illness and participated voluntarily in the study. All participants had normal or corrected to normal vision. They signed an informed consent before the experiment. 2.2 Materials and Design Participants were administered a semantic categorization task in Mandarin Chinese. A mixed design was adopted with Age Group ( young adults vs. elderly adults) as a between-subject variable, and Action Verb Type ( body-driven action verbs vs.environment-driven action verbs ) as a within-subject variable. The Age Group factor included two levels, i.e., the young adults and elderly adults. The factor Action Verb Type also included two levels: body-driven action verbs and environment-driven action verbs . Human agent action verbs denoted an immediate, controlled action performed directly by a human body effector, either the hand, the foot or the whole body. For instance, 捶打 [/chui2 da3/, to beat] conveys a forceful, repetitive motion executed by the hand, 徐行 [/xu2 xing2/, to stroll] highlights controlled and deliberate foot movement, and 匍匐 [/pu2 fu2/, to crawl] represents whole-body motion in close contact with the ground. Extra-agent action verbs, in contrast, describe gradual, autonomous change processes or transformations initiated by external forces, whether natural or social, which occurs over time without the involvement of the human body effectors. For example, 结霜 [/jie2 shuang1/, to frost] represents the gradual formation of frost which is brought about by natural forces, while 振兴 [/zhen4 xing1/, to prosper] signifies systemic progress or renewal which is brought about by social forces. The two types of action verb types were both two-character Chinese compounds, which were matched in terms of part-of-speech (all being “verb”), number of strokes ( F (2, 34) = 1.044, p = .363) and mean frequency ( F (1.201, 20.409) = 2.168, p = .154). Each type contained 18 items. For the task-setting purpose, 18 filler adjectives were included, which were also composed of two characters, such as 透明 [/tou4 ming2/, transparent] and 宁静 [/ning2 jing4/, tranquil]. Each participant completed a total of 54 trials, with an equal number of 18 trials for each type of words (i.e., 18 for body-driven action verbs, 18 for environment-driven action verbs, and 18 for filler adjectives). 2.3 Procedure Participants were seated in a comfortable chair approximately 50cm from a computer screen in the Key Laboratory of the university. Each trial began with a fixation cross presented for 300 ms, followed by a blank screen for 300 ms. The target verb remained on the screen until the participant responded. The participants were instructed to determine whether the target verb was body-related or not as quickly as possible by pressing the “F” or “J” keys. The key-to-response mapping was counterbalanced across participants, with half using “F” for “body-related” and “J” for “non-body-related”, and the other half using the reverse configuration. Response accuracy and response time were recorded for each trial. 3. Results Data of 64 participants (32 young adults and 32 elderly adults) were included in the statistical analysis. Two subjects whose accuracy data exceeding 2.5 SD from the mean ACCs ( Mean Young = 97.22%; Mean Old = 90.49%) were excluded from further analyses. The errors and reaction time data exceeding 2.5SD from the mean RTs were also excluded from further analyses. A 2 × 2 mixed-design ANOVA was conducted on the reaction time data. The results revealed a significant main effect of Verb Type, F (1, 60)=4.772, p= .033, η 2 =.074, MSE=1195604.645. The main effect of Age Group was also significant, F (1,60)=31.956, p =.000, η 2 =.348, MSE=36628247.907. The interaction between Verb Type and Age Group was not significant, F (1, 60)=0.346, p =.559, η 2 =.006, MSE=86655.516. Further analyses showed that for the young group, there was no significant difference in the RTs between the two types of action verbs ( p= .263). For the elderly group, the judgment of body-driven action verbs (2306.661 ms) was marginally significantly faster than that of environment-driven action verbs (2555.919) (p = .055). Still further analyses showed that for the body-driven action verbs , the RTs for the young group (822.290 ms) were significantly faster than those for the elderly group (2306.661 ms) ( p = .000). For environment-driven action verbs, the RTs for the young group (965.806 ms) were significantly faster than those for the elderly group (2555.919 ms) ( p = .000). Regardless of whether they were body-driven action verbs, or environment-driven action verbs, the judgment speed showed a trend of slowing down with increasing age, reflecting a significant age effect.

Previous research has highlighted the embodied nature of lexicosemantic processing, especially action language processing. Also, a couple of studies have addressed the issue of whether or not lexicosemantic is vulnerable to aging. But no definite answer has been reached. The present study undertook an experiment by drawing on two adult age groups and two types of action verbs which elaborately formed a contrast in embodiment carried thereof in order to examine the issue of lexicosemantic aging as well as the issue of the role of embodiment in lexicosemantic aging. . Experimental results demonstrate that for both the body-driven and the environment-driven action verbs, the elderly adults took a longer processing time than the young adults. This suggested that lexicosemantic aging indeed occurred to the elderly adults. This finding aligns with previous studies which also observed age-related slowing in lexical processing (Burke & Shafto, 2008; Verhaegen & Poncelet, 2013). According to the “associationist theory”, the link between action and language develops through the repeated associations between the activation of the motor system and the language system ( Pulvermüller , 1996, 1999, 2005), and decades through long-term dissociations between the two systems. It follows an inverted U-shaped pattern of development, first,undergoing an increase in these connections until adolescence, then experiencing a decrease in adulthood and old adulthood. Should this posited trajectory of the link between the motor system and the language system be true, it is predictable that with increasing age, the motor system undergoes declines, which in turn jeopardizes the capacity to simulate, which finally leads to the aging of language processing. This might be the very case for the elderly participants in the present study. Note also that in the experiment, the older adults showed longer RTs for the environment-driven action verbs than for the body-driven action verbs, whereas no such differences were found for the young adults. These results suggest that the magnitude of the embodiment carried by words influences the extent to which aging affects lexicosemantic processing. Given the experimental design, the only difference between the two types of action verbs lay in the magnitude of their semantic embodiment. The body-driven action verbs are deeply tied to sensorimotor systems, making their semantic processing heavily dependent on embodied mechanisms. In contrast, the environment-driven action verbs are more abstract, relying more on abstract language networks ( Abbassi et al., 2015 ), making their semantic processing less heavily dependent on the embodied mechanisms, or even have nothing to do with them. As a result, the body-driven action verbs were more vulnerable to aging, whereas the environment-driven action verbs were less vulnerable to aging. The magnitude of embodiment seems to have great sway on lexicosemantic aging. For the young adults, however, the link between the motor system and the language system was well maintained, such that they were at great liberty to either refer to the embodied mechanisms or to the abstract language networks. Should the two strategies stand comparable to each other, it is no wonder that the young adults manifested no difference in processing the two types of action verbs. Although the present study attempted no more than an initial endeavour to address lexicosemantic aging and the modualtion of embodiment in lexicosemantic aging, the findings are both meaningful and inspiring. Should the observations obtained in the present study be true, they would shed great light on the embodied cogntion approach to language processing and language aging. The findings also have underestimable implications for clinical diagnoses and interventions. 5. Conclusion It is generally accepted that language is embodied and that language undergoes aging. Few studies, however, were attempted to examine the issues lying underneath by correlating the two. The present study examined the lexicosemantic aging as well as the effect of embodiment on lexicosemantic aging through a semantic categorization task which capitalized on two types of contrasting action verbs, namely, the body-driven and environment-driven action verbs across two age groups. It was found that aging effects occurred to both types of action verbs indeed, but the body-driven action verbs exhibited greater resistance to aging effects compared to the environment-driven action verbs, suggesting a lower vulnerability to aging. While the present study well accomplished its goal, it represents only a first step in this line of inquiry. The materials of the study were limited to body-driven and environment-driven action verbs . A broader array of word types is undoubtedly called for in future studies. The methodology also needs to be expanded. Experimental technologies like ERPs, fNIRS, and fMRI are highly desirable.

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Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 135 (1), 1. Appendix Table 1. Target verbs used in the Experiment | Item No. | Body-driven action verbs | Environment-driven action verbs | | 1 | 暴击 /bao4 ji1/ | 枯死/ku1 si3/ | | 2 | 猛捶/meng3 chui2/ | 凋落/diao1 luo4/ | | 3 | 重敲/chong4 qiao1/ | 云卷/yun2 juan3/ | | 4 | 疾行/ji2 xing2/ | 树摇/shu4 yao/ | | 5 | 疾步/ji2 bu4/ | 月升/yue4 sheng1/ | | 6 | 竞走/jing4 zou3/ | 叶落/ye4 luo4/ | | 7 | 空翻/kong1 fan1/ | 雾绕/wu4 rao4/ | | 8 | 飞身/fei1 shen1/ | 雪融/xue3 rong2/ | | 9 | 扑击/pu1 ji1/ | 云涌/yun2 yong3/ | | 10 | 轻擦/qing1 ca1/ | 变革/bian4 ge2/ | | 11 | 慢抚/man4 fu3/ | 演变/yan3 bian4/ | | 12 | 拂弄/fu2 nong4/ | 转型/zhuan3 xing2/ | | 13 | 徐行/xu2 xing2/ | 革新/ge2 xin1/ | | 14 | 闲游/xian2 you2/ | 政变/zheng4 bian4/ | | 15 | 蹑足/nie4 zu2/ | 演化/yan3 hua4/ | | 16 | 前倾/qian2 qing1/ | 崛起/jue2 qi3/ | | 17 | 后仰/hou4 yang3/ | 变革/bian4 ge2/ | | 18 | 蜷缩/quan2 suo1/ | 覆灭/fu4 mie4/ | Information & Authors Information Version history Copyright This work is licensed under a Non Exclusive No Reuse License. Authors Metrics & Citations Metrics Article Usage 130views 70downloads Citations Download citation Meng Jiang, Yuli Hao, Ting Cao, et al. Differential Aging Effects in Embodied Processing of Chinese Body-Driven and Environment-Driven Action Verbs. Authorea. 03 January 2026. DOI: https://doi.org/10.22541/au.176743452.25062345/v1 DOI: https://doi.org/10.22541/au.176743452.25062345/v1 If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download. For more information or tips please see 'Downloading to a citation manager' in the Help menu.