A ?moving? story: motor training selectively improves comprehension of ?material processes? in naturalistic narratives

GARCÍA, ADOLFO M.

Wollongong

Congreso; 44th International Systemic Functional Congress; 2017

University of Wollongong

In the last few years, a number of studies have explored possible connections between SFL and neurocognitive approaches to language. In particular, embodied cognition research has shown important links between body movements and some SFL categories like processes and verbs of doing.Thanks to this interdisciplinary convergence, evidence for the biological basis of some SFL categories has been found and presented. However, most of this evidence comes from studies that only used isolated-word/sentence paradigms. In the spirit of interdisciplinary dialogue and interaction between disciplines, our study explored the possibility of improving the comprehension of material processes through ecological body activities and naturalistic text processing. To address these issues, we assessed oral comprehension not of single words/sentences, but of ?material? and ?neutral? (non-material) carefully matched naturalistic narratives before and after a nine-day videogame-based motor training. For each text, participants answered questions on process-related and circumstantial information. Our key finding was that motor training selectively improved understanding of process-related information in ?material? texts, while no such effects emerged when training was based on non-action videogames requiring minimal body movements. Our study offers an empirical link between embodied and situated accounts of cognition, introduces a novel approach to stimulus design, fosters further constructive dialogue between SFL and cognitive neuroscience.