Flexible Shortcuts: Linguistic Distributional Information Affects both Shallow and Deep Conceptual Processing

Flexible Shortcuts: Linguistic Distributional Information Affects both Shallow and Deep Conceptual Processing Louise Connell (louise.connell@manchester.ac.uk) School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK Dermot Lynott (dermot.lynott@manchester.ac.uk) Decision and Cognitive Sciences Research Centre, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester Booth Street West, Manchester M15 6PB, UK Abstract distributional information in a dynamic web of word-to- word (and phrase-to-phrase) associations that is powerful enough to support superficial strategies in a broad range of linguistic and conceptual tasks (e.g., Barsalou, Santos, Simmons & Wilson, 2008; Louwerse & Jeuniaux, 2008; Lynott & Connell, 2010a). The linguistic and simulation systems are closely interconnected and mutually supportive; linguistic information can activate simulation information, which may in turn activate further linguistic information, and so on. For example, when the word “cactus” is encountered, closely related linguistic tokens such as “prickly” and “sharp” will be activated, which will in turn begin to activate their relevant grounded representations in the simulation system, thus drawing attention to the visual and haptic modalities. Because their structures are both based on experience, the linguistic and simulation systems mirror each other to a certain extent, which suggests that information from language alone can approximate the perceptual, motor, affective, etc. content of concepts. Supporting this view, Louwerse and Connell (2011) have shown that linguistic distributional information is capable of distinguishing words on the basis of their perceptual modality. Words like rustling, glistening, and freezing refer to object properties in particular perceptual modalities (i.e., auditory, visual, and haptic) and occur in language with particular usage patterns. Louwerse and Connell showed that statistical analysis of these distributional patterns (based on 5-gram co-occurrence frequencies from a large corpus) produced three clusters that corresponded to auditory, visuohaptic and olfactogustatory modality groups. In other words, although auditory words were distinct, distributional information could not distinguish vision from touch, nor smell from taste. These three “linguistic modalities” (i.e., modality-specific clusters within the linguistic system) of auditory, visuohaptic and olfactogustatory words are therefore a coarse-grained approximation of the perceptual reality of five modalities. Linguistic distributional information is, at best, a blurred mirror of the simulation system. The essential difference between the two systems is that the linguistic system is best for “quick and dirty” judgements, while the simulation system is best for deeper conceptual processing. When a word such as “cactus” is heard or read, both systems are kickstarted but the linguistic system peaks in activation (e.g., spreads activation to other Previous research has shown that people use both embodied perceptual simulations and linguistic distributional knowledge during conceptual processing, with linguistic information especially useful for shallow tasks and rapid responding. Using two conceptual combination tasks, we show that this linguistic shortcut is evident in both shallow and deep conceptual processing of novel stimuli. Specifically, in both shallow sensibility judgement and deep interpretation generation tasks, people use the linguistic shortcut as a “quick and dirty” guide to whether the concepts are likely to combine in a coherent situated simulation. Linguistic distributional frequency predicts both the likelihood and timecourse of rejecting a novel word compound as nonsensical or uninterpretable. However, it only predicts the timecourse of successful processing in shallow sensibility judgement because deeper interpretation generation requires conceptual processing in the simulation system. Keywords: conceptual combination; linguistic distributional information; embodied cognition; simulation. Introduction The embodied simulation view of conceptual representation holds that the same neural systems that are responsible for representing information during perception, action, and introspection are also responsible for representing (or simulating) the same information during conceptual thought (e.g., Barsalou, 1999; Glenberg, 1997). Furthermore, concepts do not exist in a representational vacuum, but rather are situated within a broader situational context that includes perceptual, motor, affective and social information on how that concept has been experienced in the past (e.g., Barsalou & Wiemer-Hastings, 2005; Lynott & Connell, 2010a). A cactus, for example, can potentially include visual information (e.g., its green colour and prickly surface), tactile information (e.g., the sharpness of its spines), and affective information (e.g., negative valence for anyone who has spent days picking spines from skin), all situated relative to other concepts (e.g., in a desert location or as a pot plant on a kitchen windowsill). However, the simulation system does not act alone. People are sensitive to distributional, statistical patterns in language and the wider environment, and this sensitivity provides a powerful generalised learning mechanism from early infancy (Aslin et al., 1998; Kirkham et al., 2002). Even in adults, the linguistic system contains statistical