# The Engagement of Motor Imagery in Metaphoric Comprehension

Alexandra Golding

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## To cite this version:

Alexandra Golding. The Engagement of Motor Imagery in Metaphoric Comprehension. Brain, Body, Cognition, 7 (2), Gerry Leisman, 2017, 2643-5683. hal-04442384

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# The Engagement of Motor Imagery in Metaphoric Comprehension

Alex Golding

**Abstract**

This paper proposes a synthesis of ideas from relevance theory's conceptual and propositional approach to metaphoric interpretation with assumptions about the role of motor imagery from embodied cognition. Relevance theory's account of metaphoric interpretation describes how conceptual and propositional representations are accessed during interpretation. The hearer of a metaphor inferentially develops the encoded concept to an occasion-specific ad-hoc concept, which resembles the speaker's thought more closely. Under this approach, motor imagery is not intrinsic to speaker meaning since it is not part of the concept and able to undergo inference. Motor imagery is the capacity to simulate motor actions to plan for action. Within embodied cognition, for example, the word <run>

accesses its conceptual counterpart, which shares a resemblance to previous activated motor imagery of observing or running oneself. Novel metaphors using action verbs activate motor imagery more than familiar ones as the latter accesses a new meaning, thereby weakening its motor imagery connection. Therefore, to reconcile this data with relevance theory, this paper proposes three solutions. Motor imagery may: (1) act as input to the inferential process, but is not part of speaker meaning; (2) generate other thoughts which undergo inference; (3) or be part of conceptual meaning and undergo inferential operations, which are intrinsic to metaphoric meaning. Whilst (1) and (2) are appealing, option (3) finds support from recent experimental evidence.

**Alex Golding:** University of Brighton, East Sussex, United Kingdom.

**Keywords:** metaphor, motor imagery, inference, non-propositional, kinesthesia.

**Correspondence:** Alex Golding; University of Brighton; Village Way, Falmer, Brighton, East Sussex, BN19PH; United Kingdom.

**E-mail address:** A.Golding@brighton.ac.uk

**Introduction**

There is very good reason for anyone concerned with the role of inference in communication to assume that what is communicated is propositional: it is relatively easy to say what propositions are, and how inference might operate over propositions. No one has any clear idea how inference might operate over non-propositional objects: say, over images, impressions or emotions ... too bad if much of what is communicated does not fit the propositional mould.¹

In the above quote, Dan Sperber & Deirdre Wilson¹ articulate a particular view of the contribution non-propositional information might make (or not make) to inferential communication. Non-propositional is defined here as the sensorimotor and affective aspects of communication. The above quote is not to be taken to suggest that Sperber & Wilson¹ believe an account that makes use of non-propositional information is an impossibility. However, it does seem that relevance theory is committed to a view under which inferential processes act on propositions.

This paper sets out to question this view. It seeks to demonstrate that non-propositional information, or more specifically motor imagery which arises during communication that involves action verbs, plays a crucial role in the hearer arriving at a speaker's meaning. Any account of communication and cognition must incorporate both propositional and non-propositional information. As a result, a key objective is to develop an account of how we deal with motor imagery evoked during novel metaphoric utterance comprehension. Three solutions are explored in this paper such that motor imagery: (1) acts only as the input to inferential processes and so is not a part of speaker meaning; (2) generates further propositional
thoughts, and it is these which undergo inference; (3) is intrinsic to a concept and so is able to undergo inferential operations and be part of speaker's intended meaning.

On the one hand, relevance theory provides a rich propositional account of the inferential procedures in utterance interpretation and the specific constraints on these processes, but seems unable to deal with the non-propositional aspects of meaning.² On the other, work in embodied cognition, by Laurence Barsalou,³,⁴ Antonio Damasio,⁵ Damasio et al,⁶ Rolf Zwaan,⁷ Tobias, Richter & Zwaan,⁸ provides a comprehensive account of non-propositional information, yet lacks a coherent view of the inferential processes involved in utterance understanding. By reconciling aspects of each view, we are better placed to develop an account of language interpretation.

This paper is divided into four sections. Firstly, it will provide an explanation of metaphor. Secondly, it defines motor imagery and explains how it works in cognition. Following to this, the relevance-theoretic comprehension procedure is described to situate the arguments that follow. Finally, this paper provides three solutions as to how to deal with motor imagery within a relevance-theoretic framework.

## What is Metaphor?

In the traditional approach, metaphor is understood as involving a transfer of properties from metaphor vehicle to target. Etymologically speaking, the word metaphor derives from the Greek word μεταφορά, meaning ‘transfer.’⁹ Vilayanur Ramachandran¹⁰ relates metaphor to the more general cognitive ability humans have to make connections between different mental domains, transferring elements from one mental structure onto another.

This paper argues that metaphor is about the juxtaposition of two or more concepts not normally brought together. The unfamiliar juxtaposition seems to evoke more visual, kinaesthetic or emotional/feeling (non-propositional) representations during metaphoric interpretation. Helen Johnson¹¹ studies although focussed on metaphor production, evidence “the significance of sensory or bodily experience in metaphoric processing”. Through interviews, her participants claimed that they had access to “visual, auditory, tactile and motor/kinaesthetic modalities”, supported through electroencephalogram (EEG) data of their brains’ electrical activity.¹¹

Consider the following, from Sylvia Plath¹²:

1. ‘The faces have no features. They are bald…’

This metaphor brings together the encoded concepts FACE¹ AND BALD. IT IS AN UNFAMILIAR JUXTAPOSITION OF CONCEPTS IN WHICH THE VEHICLE CONCEPT, BALD, IS EMPLOYED TO UNDERSTAND THE TARGET CONCEPT, FACE, IN MORE DEPTH. THESE CONCEPTS ARE DEVELOPED

BY HEARERS/READERS TO MORE CLOSELY MATCH THE SPEAKER'S THOUGHT. SPERBER & WILSON¹³ CLAIM THAT CREATIVE NOVEL METAPHORS SUCH AS THIS DO NOT COMMUNICATE ANYTHING EXPLICITLY SINCE THEY ARE “DIFFICULT OR IMPOSSIBLE TO DEFINE”. INSTEAD, THE POETIC EFFECTS ARE INFERENTIALLY DERIVED AS AN ARRAY OF WEAKLY IMPLICATED PROPOSITIONS, NONE OF WHICH ARE STRONGLY IMPLICATED:

2. (a)The faces have no trace of a personality.

(b) The faces do not convey any emotion.

(c) The faces show little signs of a humanity.

(d) It is hard to read their faces.

The relevance-theoretic account suggests that what feels like vague or impressionistic communication can be understood by assuming that an utterance gives some inconclusive evidence for a range of assumptions, each of which has propositional content. It seems, then, that a propositional account can work for the example in (1).

However, a question that arises is how elements such as ‘have no trace of a personality’, ‘do not convey any emotion’, ‘show little signs of a humanity’ and ‘is hard to read’ arise during interpretation. Where do these propositional chunks of information come from? Sperber & Wilson¹,¹³ suggest that such information comes from world knowledge stores, attached to the encoded concept. However, we do not normally associate BALD with ‘no trace of a personality’ or ‘not conveying emotion’. These types of properties present in the implicated conclusions in (2), but which are not found in the metaphor vehicle, BALD, are called ‘emergent properties’, a term used to refer to any property that seems to emerge without adequate explanation.

What seems to be carried across from BALD to FACES is a sense of bareness, which has a visual and felt-sense quality. In indicates a need to look *beyond* propositionality. The three options explored in this paper all modify the traditional relevance-theoretic approach in some way by looking at the contribution of motor imagery during inferential communication. The next section provides an explanation of motor imagery.

## What is Motor Imagery?

To understand what motor imagery is, it is important to distinguish it from visual imagery. Jennifer Stevens¹⁴ claims that visual imagery represents the external environment to produce an appropriate motor response. If I see a car coming towards me, I step out of the way. Visual imagery provides information, thus, about spatial coordinates, such as the direction and speed of the car. The spatial system is, however, separate from the visual apparatus; it is just that the external world is mostly perceived through vision.¹⁵,¹⁶

<footnote>i. Small capitals indicate a concept</footnote>
Representations in the motor cortex act as the intermediaries between spatial information and our biomechanical possibilities. Motor imagery, however, is defined as “the class of one’s images of one’s own bodily movements which are used to simulate or plan for subsequent action.”¹⁴ Motor imagery is the capacity to simulate movement since imagined and actual movement utilise the same brain structures, and they also adhere to similar limitations. For instance, if I imagine moving my right leg, a mental representation will be formed in the left motor cortex for that particular limb and so activate the same circuits as actual movement. If I visualise my right leg moving, I can see it moving in space, but I do not kinaesthetically feel this movement or activate motor imagery. That is the difference.

There is a general consensus in the literature that motor imagery activates the cingulate (somatosensory) and parietal cortices, premotor and supplementary motor areas.¹⁴,¹⁷⁻²⁰ Opinion divides as to whether it also activates the primary motor cortex (M1). A study by Stinear et al²⁰ demonstrates that motor imagery, but not visual imagery, can produce excitability in the M1. Participants were asked to imagine moving and to move their right thumb (abductor pollicis brevis (APB)).²⁰ Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was applied to the left M1, corresponding to the right APB. It delivered single pulses to stimulate the brain and spinal cord to produce motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) from the APB muscle.²⁰ Electromyography (EMG) also recorded data from the surface area of the APB.

Participants underwent four conditions: (1) tapping their thumb in time to a metronome; (2) a resting condition; (3) a visual condition in which they imagined seeing their thumb tapping to the metronome beat; (4) and a kinaesthetic condition where they imagined moving their thumb to the same beat and be aware of the feeling it produces.²⁰ Their results showed that motor imagery activates M1. These kinaesthetic activations were supraspinal, or rather above the spine. The background EMG data remained the same, thus demonstrating how there were no activations at the spinal level, so no actual muscular activity. Actual muscular activity would signal that it was not motor imagery.

Frith et al²¹ claim that motor imagery is activated when there is no sensory stimuli from the world. Davidson et al²² argue for an internal model which the sensorimotor system uses, and in the absence of adequate sensory feedback, it predicts the consequences or our movements. It could be that the incoming stimuli is too slow to process in time. The forward model employs copies of efference motor signals, originating in the central nervous system (CNS) and sent to the periphery, to make these kinaesthetic predictions.²² It is especially effective for stable objects in the world. The system could, therefore, also work out the errors between a desired and actual outcome to provide a means for learning and so

enhance performance. Hence, such a model enables mental simulation of motor actions to enhance our chances of survival. It is these simulations that this paper is interested in. Since this mental capacity exists, is it possible that it could have been exapted for use by the language system especially when processing action verbs in metaphoric expressions? If so, at what point do these representations contribute to the inferential operations involved? The next section will sketch out the relevance-theoretic approach to communication and cognition before exploring the three solutions.

## The Relevance-theoretic Account of Communication and Cognition

### The Cognitive and Communicative Principles of Relevance

Sperber et al¹ relevance theory is an inferential model of communication in which the intended meaning is not wholly provided by the linguistically encoded meaning, but inferred on the basis of ‘ostensive’ utterances. Utterances create expectations of relevance, and come with a presumption that they are relevant enough to be worth processing.¹ The audience is responsible for constructing psychological contextual assumptions as to the intended meaning, retrieved from their personal and cultural encyclopaedic knowledge found in memory, perception and inferential procedures.¹

An input is defined as relevant to the extent that in its processing context it yields enough positive cognitive effects to be worth the processing effort:

Relevance of an input to an individual:

(a) Other things being equal, the greater the positive cognitive effects achieved by processing an input, the greater the relevance of the input to the individual at that time.

(b) Other things being equal, the greater the processing effort expended, the lower the relevance of the input to the individual at that time.¹³

A positive cognitive effect is achieved through the interaction of new with old information and a subsequent change in the way an individual represents the world. The new input gains relevance by interacting with previously held assumptions and evoking contextual effects, such as strengthening, contradicting or combining with them to yield an implicated conclusion.¹ As Sperber & Wilson state:

> In an intuitive sense, assumptions derived or retrieved from encyclopaedic entries are old information, whereas assumptions derived from perception or linguistic decoding, i.e. from input systems, are newly presented information, and become old in the course of being processed.¹

The human cognitive system is automatically set up to attend to relevant information in the environment. Our perceptual mechanisms are geared to monitor and select
relevant stimuli, including utterances, from the environment. Memory is programmed to select from its vast databases only relevant assumptions that would enable comprehension. According to the Cognitive Principle of Relevance, “human cognition tends to be geared to the maximisation of relevance.”²³

It follows from this, and the Communicative Principle of Relevance, that utterances come with a presumption that they are relevant enough to be worth processing. Stimuli that come with this guarantee are called ‘ostensive’ stimuli and form the basis of ‘ostensive- inferential’ communication: communication in which a speaker ostensively provides an addressee with evidence enabling them to infer the communicator’s meaning.

Ostensive stimuli supply the addressee with the knowledge that the communicator intends to inform them of something. Once this informative intention is recognised, it is said to be mutually manifest to both speaker and hearer “A proposition is manifest to an individual at a given time to the extent that this individual is disposed to draw (non-hypothetical) inferences from it.”²⁴

An assumption may be manifest to different degrees. The more salient a manifest assumption is, and hence the more likely to be mentally represented, the more strongly manifest it is. For instance, my accidentally knocking over a glass of water (evidence) does not make mutually manifest any communicative or informative intention. However, should I knock the glass over because I am angry, and intend for you to recognise this, it would count as an ostensive stimulus. This is because my intention to inform you of my anger, and that you should recognise this intention has been made mutually manifest to both addressee and communicator. The principle, therefore, captures a special property of these stimuli, namely that they come with a guarantee of relevance, which renders them distinct from other non-communicative phenomena in the environment:

Every utterance conveys a presumption of its own optimal relevance.¹³ Optimal relevance is described as:

An utterance is optimally relevant to the hearer just in case:

(a) It is relevant enough to be worth the hearer's processing effort;

(b) It is the most relevant one compatible with the speaker's abilities and preferences.¹³

It follows, therefore, that the utterance should be worth the audience's attention (that is, have a range of cognitive effects for the hearer) and will not demand any gratuitous effort on part of the hearer.

Moreover, the Communicative Principle of Relevance conjoins with the notion of optimal relevance to license a specific comprehension procedure. The hearer takes the linguistically encoded sentence meaning and adheres to the process, as outlined below:

(a) Follow a path of least effort in constructing and testing interpretative hypotheses (regarding disambiguation, reference resolutions, implicatures, etc.).

(b) Stop when your expectations of relevance are satisfied.²³

Nonetheless, expectations vary according to context. Relevance theory claims, for example, that certain uses of language, such as those that have poetic effects, demand more processing effort, which requires being offset by extra cognitive effects if relevance is to be achieved. The claim, in this paper, is that although novel metaphors may require more mental effort and achieve more effects, a theory of communication and cognition that centres solely on propositional forms misses the extent to which language can enable us to feel the world as opposed to only conceptualising it.

## From decoding to inferring

Linguistic processing begins with the translation of the perceptual sound of a word into a conceptual format.¹¹,¹,²,²⁵ The language faculty supplies this schematic decoded sentence, the logical form, to the deductive device (see ‘sentence meaning’ in figure 1 below). At this point, it is sub-propositional until it has undergone certain inferential procedures to flesh out the proposition the speaker has expressed. Relevance theory is an inferential approach to pragmatics with its roots in propositional and conceptual views of cognition. An utterance communicates a proposition, which constitutes a mental representation in conceptual format, and this expresses a thought. Verbal communication provides two levels of propositional content: the explicature and implicature (see ‘explicature’ and ‘what is meant’ in figure 1 below).¹,¹³,²⁵⁻²⁷ Constructing the explicature involves assigning reference, disambiguating ambiguous words and developing ad-hoc concepts.

The diagram above differentiates between the decoding processes at the sentence level to the inferential processes that occur in the deductive device in the conceptual regions of cognition.

## Beyond Propositionality: Three Solutions

This last section explores the three possible solutions for dealing with motor imagery within an inferential account of communication. A particularly complex but beautiful example is taken from Leonard Cohen (1993). All poetic instances of metaphor seem to work like a puzzle in which they require more mental effort, offset by extra effects in the form of implicatures. As individuals, we have varying encyclopaedic resources, so we may have slightly different readings for the metaphor below:

“Your blond hair is the way I live—smashed by light!”²⁹

<footnote>ii. This is not strictly true since many non-truth conditional expressions are procedural; that is, rather than encoding a concept, they guide the hearer towards an implicated conclusion.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1.** Sub-propositional and propositional forms²⁸</figcaption></figure>

The poem is no doubt talking to a woman with blonde hair. The encoded concept LIGHT is the metaphorical vehicle out of which elements are transferred over to SMASHED, the target concept. It is an unfamiliar juxtaposition of concepts. SMASHED has two meanings: to be broken into pieces and the state of being intoxicated. Broadly speaking, the metaphor suggests a dispersed state from brokenness and intoxication, which is a reaction to the LIGHT, which is itself used metaphorically to refer to the blonde-haired woman and certain positives in life.

All three solutions begin the relevance-theoretic analysis below, but each adds a slight modification. Hence, the concepts decoded in the language faculty are developed into ad-hoc concepts through pragmatic inference that operates over the decoded sentence in the deductive device (Sperber & Wilson 2012). Following Fodor,³⁰ relevance theorists understand a concept as an address in memory that links to certain types of information: lexical (phonetic, phonological and syntactical); logical (analytic implications); and encyclopaedic (all personal experience of a concept, including scientific or cultural beliefs.²⁵,²⁶ As such, SMASHED is extended to SMASHED,*³³ DURING INFERENTIAL PROCESSING, THE LOGICAL ENTRY: *IF X IS SMASHED, X IS PHYSICALLY BROKEN*, IS SUPPRESSED SO THAT THE CONCEPT CAN BE EXTENDED TO APPLY TO ENTITIES THAT ARE NOT JUST PHYSICALLY BROKEN, BUT ALSO EMOTIONALLY. CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE ENCYCLOPAEDIC INFORMATION ATTACHED TO THIS CONCEPT: *THINGS SHATTER AND DISPERSE WHEN THEY ARE SMASHED; THINGS ARE SMASHED IN ACCIDENTS OR PURPOSIVELY*, WOULD ACT AS

PREVIOUSLY HELD ASSUMPTIONS AGAINST WHICH TO PROCESS THE NEW INCOMING SENTENCE.

THE ENCODED CONCEPT SMASHED WOULD ALSO BE DEVELOPED INTO SMASHED**, THE INTOXICATED USE, AS IT SEEMS TO RETAIN BOTH USES. THE LOGICAL ENTRY: *IF X IS SMASHED, X IS PHYSICALLY INEBRIATED*, MAY BE PARTIALLY SUPPRESSED AND BROADENED TO APPLY TO AN EMOTIONAL INTOXICATION. THE ENCYCLOPAEDIC ENTRIES MAY CONTAIN THE FOLLOWING: *LIFE MAY SEEM FREE FROM TROUBLES WHEN INTOXICATED; YOU CAN ESCAPE YOUR NORMAL EXISTENCE WHEN INTOXICATED; IT COULD BE A DESTRUCTIVE EXISTENCE TO INHABIT*. THE METAPHORIC VEHICLE LIGHT ALSO HAS ITS LOGICAL ENTRY SUPPRESSED: *IF X IS LIGHT, X PROVIDES PHYSICAL ILLUMINATION AND MAKES THINGS VISIBLE*, AND ITS SPHERE OF REFERENCE IS BROADENED TO INCLUDE ENTITIES, SUCH AS 'THE BLONDE', 'ATTRACTION' AND 'CERTAIN POSITIVES IN LIFE'. THE ENCYCLOPAEDIC ENTRY MAY REFER TO: *THE BRIGHTNESS AND ALLURE OF LIGHT; HOW IT MAY BRING RADIANCE*. SOME OF THESE QUALITIES WILL BE TRANSFERRED OVER TO THE TARGET CONCEPTS SMASHED* AND SMASHED**. THE FOLLOWING SUBSECTIONS HIGHLIGHT HOW EACH SOLUTION ADDRESSES THE ROLE OF MOTOR IMAGERY.

<footnote>iii. *Indicates an ad-hoc concept.</footnote>
## Solution One

In terms of the metaphor in (3) as previously stated, Sperber & Wilson¹³ would view it as “difficult or impossible to define” because novel metaphors can only ever communicate vague thoughts and impressions. Wilson³¹ view is that non-propositional information in the form of “clues- perceptual, conceptual, sensorimotor, kinesic, emotional” can only act as input to the deductive device, but will not feature in the output. Non-propositional information does not undergo inferential operations since it cannot be mentally represented and so contribute to a proposition. In accordance with Ernst-August Gutt,³² these motor imagery cues activate or inhibit certain contextual assumptions that lead to an implicated conclusion. Considering that propositions are constructed out of concepts on the relevance-theoretic account, Wharton³³ claims that they cannot consist in non-propositional elements. For him, motor imagery does not have logical properties since it is more of a cognitive state.

In terms of the metaphor in (3), the hearer would process the new incoming sentence against the contextual assumptions extracted from previously held knowledge, attached to our mental concepts. The interaction of new and old information creates these additional positive cognitive effects in the form of weak implicatures, offset by processing effort that is invested. The different propositional forms are shown below:

(a) Explicature: SMASHED*/SMASHED** by LIGHT*.

(b) Contextual assumptions: a sense of a dispersed state; emotional dispersion; being intoxicated by life and attraction; escaping one's everyday world; the allure of certain positives in life; a sense of being physically overcome.

(c) Contextual implications:

(i) The speaker is in a state of dispersion.

(ii) The speaker is in a dispersed state as a result of this attraction and intoxication.

(iii) The speaker is feeling intoxicated by certain positive aspects of life.

(iv) The blonde-haired woman is alluring.

(v) The state of dispersion, intoxication and attraction to the blonde represent certain positives in life.

Although the metaphor and the impression it creates conforms to a vague form of communication, not interpreted by a singly and strongly communicated proposition, it is still propositional.

Following Wharton,³⁴ the action verb <smashed> would access motor information in the form of a cognitive state. This state feeds the deductive device for inferential processing and acts as a cue or constraint in deriving the propositional meanings in (4) above. For Wilson,³¹ non-propositional elements conform to patterns of

activation that influence inference without having to be a conceptual representation. They do not alter the propositional content, but they affect the way it is interpreted. Hence, motor information, not imagery, could lead to the construction of certain contextual assumptions, in this case: (1) a sense of dispersed state; (2) emotional dispersion; (3) being intoxicated by life and attraction. These in turn could aid in the development of the relevant explicature and implicatures. In short, we do not kinaesthetically feel the dispersed state or sense of intoxication, we conceptualise it.

Whilst this viewpoint is persuasive, it talks only of motor information and so misses the extent to which the literature on motor imagery talks about mental simulations in the motor cortex. Davidson et al²² studies on the predictive mind/brain also show how mental representations in the motor cortex are necessary for survival. Moreover, most of the weak implicatures in (4c) are linked to kinaesthetic senses. Is it possible to truly understand concepts such as SMASHED if we cannot access the motor cortex responsible for this type of embodied phenomena? Motor imagery does not have logical properties or an encyclopaedic entry, but does that prevent it from playing a role in utterance interpretation? Embodied cognition argues a different story.

## Solution Two

Put simply, Barsalou³,⁴ has proposed an account of cognition called the perceptual symbol system. It assumes a relation of resemblance between the objects in the world processed in our sensorimotor systems and our mental concepts in cognition that represent them. This is because our mental concepts are extracted from these sensorimotor representations, such that they resemble each other.³,⁴ In figure 2, the neural activation of perceptual states that represent the chair reflects how we process incoming stimuli in the sensorimotor cortex. The concept chair is partially extracted from these perceptual states, and so on one occasion it might represent the shape and feel of the chair as you sit on it. With all instances of perceiving chairs, we build up vast repertoires of perceptually stored information, out of which we derive chair for different instances of use in a particular thought train or to interpret another's utterance.

To evidence this, Zwaanet al³⁵ found that certain shapes denoted by sentences lead to faster recognition of the shape of an object or animal presented in a picture. For instance, a picture of an eagle with its wings outstretched was recognised faster than one with its wings folded upon hearing the sentence 'the ranger saw the eagle in the sky'.³⁵ For these authors, the difference between the two possibilities: “the ranger saw the eagle in the sky/nest” is not fully captured by propositional explanations within an amodal system. In their view, the visual prime of outstretched wings means flying whereas folded implies being in a nest. The suggestion is that the sensorimotor
<caption>**Figure 2.** Perceptual symbol system.³</caption>

PSS

Perceptual Symbol Systems

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /></figure>

http://emotionandembodiment.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/perceptual-symbol-systems.png

<figure><img src="image_5.png" /></figure>

representations activated by the visual primes underlies conceptual access for SKY and NEST. For Zwaan et al,³⁵ such distinctions can only be registered by a system in which “perceptual representations rather than amodal propositions are the building blocks of cognition”.

Richter et al⁸ claim that with objects that denote a specific colour and shape, such as an orange, when there was a match of both colour and shape (orange and round) from a visual prime to the target word (<an orange>), subjects were faster in their semantic tasks of classification and lexical decision. The quicker response times for word access for a combination of features suggests that the perceptual representations are not being processed in a linear and additive manner, but rather holistically. The implication is that the mind/brain functions more efficiently when it perceives high levels of resemblances between visual primes and target words. This evidence cannot be explicated if motor and visual imagery acted as mere cues or constraints during inference as solution one suggests. Why would the processing of additional features be quicker?

For solution two, motor imagery is generated in the motor cortex as embodied cognition theorists presume. Although it is activated by certain concepts, in this case SMASHED, it is still not the type of entity that can be

added to a proposition, so it creates further propositional thoughts about these: *dispersed and intoxicated states*, and it is these which undergo the inferential procedures in the deductive device. This solution acknowledges the capacity for motor information to be mentally represented, and that it is activated in the motor cortex during the decoding process. Nevertheless, it suggests a one-way route between mental representations in the motor cortex and those in the deductive device since motor imagery does not have logical properties and so cannot be part of the speaker's intended propositional meaning. Both solutions one and two view our thoughts as only rational entities with logical and encyclopaedic properties. To challenge this, it is imperative to find evidence in which inference can operate over motor imagery.

### Solution Three

A recent study by Taylor et al³⁶ evidences how sentences with action verbs activate motor imagery. Motor imagery is activated for verbs that specify a particular direction for manual rotation when the direction is disambiguated. Disambiguation is an inferential process. Motor imagery, however, is not activated when the direction is left ambiguous.
Taylor et al³⁶ study shows that activation of motor imagery occurs when it is comprehended. Alfonso Caramazza et al³⁷ argue that ambiguous words, such as pronouns, are not inferentially assigned reference immediately, but require material later in the discourse to do so. Taylor, Lev-Ari & Zwaan agree in that: Comprehension requires the integration of information within and across sentences, so if motor resonance is involved in comprehension, it should also be shown to occur as a result of meaning integration across sentences.³⁶

Their research involved participants reading a sentence with an action verb (<turned>) in a context which leaves the meaning or rather the direction of the manual rotation ambiguous until the next sentence. An example is: "He examined the/ pie through/ the microwave/ window and/ turned the/ timer./ The cooking/ time needed/ to be/ longer [shorter]."³⁶

In the first sentence, the direction of <turned> is ambiguous, but the last word in the second sentence disambiguates it since <longer> would mean turning it in a clockwise direction while <shorter> would mean an anti-clockwise one.

The participants read the sentences in chunks as shown by the / mark. To do so, they had to turn the dial either continuously in a clockwise direction to move to the next chunk or in an anti-clockwise one. Each chunk was timed to measure the speed of reading. Taylor et al³⁶ showed that reading times were indeed faster on the final disambiguating word: <longer> or <shorter> if it matched the direction the participants were turning the dial. For instance, if they were turning the dial in a clockwise direction, and they read the sentence in (5) with <longer> as the final word, the reading time would be faster. It suggests that the manual rotation is activating motor representations, which are reinforced by the action verb, also activating the same area, so there is a slight aspect of kinaesthetically feeling the movement through simulation. If comprehension occurs when the actual manual rotation and the motor imagery of the concept of rotation cohere, motor imagery must be undergoing inferential operations.

However, <turned> is not ambiguous as these authors suggest, so it is not disambiguation that occurs, but rather the development of the ad-hoc concept turned*, in which the encoded meaning turned is extended to include the direction of the manual rotation (clockwise or anti-clockwise). Thus, both the encoded concept turned* and the ad-hoc concept turned* seem to include or are associated with motor imagery in their address in memory; it is just that the ad-hoc concept one is broadened to include the direction. In relevance theory, ad-hoc concept construction is still an inferential process operating over the decoded sentence to develop the explicature.¹³ In contrast to relevance theory, this study shows how inference is shown to be operating over a non-propositional entity, indicating that motor imagery is part of the speaker's intended meaning.

In view of these findings, it may be pertinent to modify the relevance-theoretic notion of mutual manifestness to: Propositions and non-propositional information are manifest to an individual at a given time to the extent that this individual is disposed to draw (non-hypothetical) inferences from it.²⁴

Therefore, for solution three, it is possible to derive the following levels of meaning:

(a) Explicature: SMASHED* (motor imagery) SMASHED ** (motor imagery) by LIGHT *.

(b) Contextual assumptions: a sense of a dispersed state (motor imagery); emotional dispersion (motor imagery); being intoxicated (motor imagery) by life and attraction; escaping one's everyday world; the allure of certain positives in life; a sense of being physically overcome (motor imagery).

(c) Contextual implication: the speaker is in a state of emotional dispersion (motor imagery) and overcome (motor imagery) by the blonde, the attraction and intoxication (motor imagery) in such a way that is as alluring as it is dangerous.

In contrast to solutions one and two, motor imagery is part of the encoded and ad-hoc conceptual meaning; hence, it is part of the contextual assumptions, which are extracted from the encoded concepts, and the implications, developed in parallel. The other key distinction is that motor imagery is undergoing inferential operations, and so it is part of the speaker's intended meaning (implicature). Motor imagery is not just input to the device; it is added to the propositional levels of meaning. It implies that there is a two-way connection between the motor cortex and the deductive device since motor imagery features in the propositional forms. More importantly, it provides the possibility to kinaesthetically feel the metaphors as we develop them in our minds. Since motor imagery is part of the implicature, it is also responsible for providing these extra positive cognitive effects that constitute our cognitive and now bodily pay-off for the extra mental processing effort invested.

## Conclusion

Even though up and until fairly recently, “no one had any clear idea how inference might operate over non-propositional objects: say, over images, impressions or emotions,”¹ there is now a large body of work in embodied cognition to present an alternative view. This paper has explored three options to address the question of how to deal with motor imagery in a relevance-theoretic framework. It, firstly, explored the possibility that motor imagery acts like a clue to constrain the search for relevance, but that it is not included in the intended speaker meaning. Recent evidence about the way in which motor and visual imagery can affect the way we process certain words/concepts suggests a need to move beyond
propositionality.⁸ The second solution proposed that this motoric information generates further thoughts which then undergo inferential operations in cognition. However, a recent study by Taylor et al³⁶ shows that motor imagery was essential in disambiguating sentence final words about the direction of manual rotation. If this is so, it corroborates solution three in which metaphoric expressions using action verbs, if sufficiently invested in, access motor imagery, which is essential in deriving the intended meaning of the utterance. We can kinaesthetically feel our metaphoric interpretations.

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