Cooking from cold to hot: goal-directedness in simulation and language

Tinka Welke; Susanne Raisig; Kati Nowack; Gesa Schaadt; Herbert Hagendorf; Elke van der Meer

doi:10.1515/cog-2014-0058

Article

Cooking from cold to hot: goal-directedness in simulation and language

Tinka Welke , Susanne Raisig , Kati Nowack , Gesa Schaadt , Herbert Hagendorf and Elke van der Meer

Published/Copyright: October 7, 2014

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From the journal Cognitive Linguistics Volume 25 Issue 4

Abstract

The present study explores the processing of temporal information in event knowledge by focusing on the transition from an earlier, source state to a later, goal state. Participants were presented with an event verb followed by antonymous adjectives or adverbs denoting an earlier state and a later state. The states were presented either chronologically (to cook: cold – hot) or inversely (to cook: hot – cold) with regard to the denoted event. Participants were asked to identify either the earlier or the later state. We found that later states are identified faster and more accurately than earlier states. Later states presented chronologically were identified even more quickly than later states presented inversely. We attribute our results to the fact that directedness towards the goal state is a general principle of cognition which plays a fundamental role in language and in simulation, whereby language processing provides faster and more direct access to goals even than simulation.

Keywords: language and simulation processing; event representation; event states; goal-directedness; chronology

Received: 2013-5-8

Revised: 2014-2-7

Accepted: 2014-3-17

Published Online: 2014-10-7

Published in Print: 2014-11-1

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/cog-2014-0058

Keywords for this article

language and simulation processing; event representation; event states; goal-directedness; chronology