Cover not available
Article published In:
Review of Cognitive Linguistics
Vol. 18:2 (2020) ► pp.519–534

Less is more

Motor fluency impairment and body-specific representation of valence

| Southwest University

According to the Body-Specificity Hypothesis, humans preferentially associate positive features with their dominant side with which they interact more fluently, and negatives features with their non-dominant side with which they act more clumsily. The current research investigated implicit space-valence mappings in two clinical populations, namely, patients with unilateral stroke and individuals who suffered the loss of a limb. Across the two studies, our findings offered general support for the Body-Specificity Hypothesis with important caveats. Specifically, the body-specificity effect was more detectable in the two groups of right-handed individuals with motor fluency impairment on their left side than healthy controls. This is possibly because the former can gain more fluent experience with their dominant hand since they exclusively use the intact hand for self-sufficiency, which may increase their bias toward “right-is-good” pattern. Taken together, the results provided converging evidence that individual differences in action fluency may moderate the body-specificity effect.

Keywords: action fluency, body-specificity effect, space-valence mapping, replication, mental metaphor
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Experiment 1
    • 2.1Method
      • 2.1.1Participants
      • 2.1.2Material and procedure
    • 2.2Results and discussion
  • 3.Experiment 2
    • 3.1Method
      • 3.1.1Participants
      • 3.1.2Materials and procedure
    • 3.2Results and discussion
  • 4.General discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 4 December 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00069.li
References
Beilock, S. L., & Holt, L. E.
(2007) Embodied preference judgments: Can likeability be driven by the motor system?. Psychological Science, 18(1), 51–57. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boroditsky, L., & Gaby, A.
(2010) Remembrances of times East: absolute spatial representations of time in an Australian aboriginal community. Psychological Science, 21(11), 1635–1639. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Button, K. S., Ioannidis, J. P., Mokrysz, C., Nosek, B. A., Flint, J., Robinson, E. S., & Munafò, M. R.
(2013) Power failure: why small sample size undermines the reliability of neuroscience. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 14(5), 365. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Casasanto, D.
(2009) Embodiment of abstract concepts: Good and bad in right- and left-handers. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 1381, 351–356. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Casasanto, D., & Chrysikou, E. G.
(2011) When left is “right”: Motor fluency shapes abstract concepts. Psychological Science, 221, 419–422. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Casasanto, D., & Henetz, T.
(2012) Handedness shapes children’s abstract concepts. Cognitive Science, 36(2), 359–72. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chen, M., & Lin, C. H.
(2019) What is in your hand influences your purchase intention: Effect of motor fluency on motor simulation. Current Psychology, 1–9. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De la Fuente, J., Casasanto, D., & Santiago, J.
(2015) Observed actions affect body-specific associations between space and valence. Acta Psychologica, 1561, 32–36. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De la Fuente, J., Casasanto, D., Martínez-Cascales, J. I., & Santiago, J.
(2017) Motor imagery shapes abstract concepts. Cognitive Science, 41(5), 1350–1360. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De la Fuente, J., Casasanto, D., Román, A., & Santiago, J.
(2015) Can culture influence body-specific associations between space and valence?. Cognitive Science, 39(4), 821–832. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Diedrichsen, J., Hazeltine, E., Kennerley, S., & Ivry, R. B.
(2001) Moving to directly cued locations abolishes spatial interference during bimanual actions. Psychological Science, 12(6), 493–498. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dumas-Mallet, E., Button, K. S., Boraud, T., Gonon, F., & Munafò, M. R.
(2017) Low statistical power in biomedical science: a review of three human research domains. Royal Society Open Science, 4(2), 160254. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Foolen, A.
(2019) The value of left and right. In Mackenzie, J. L. & Alba-Juez, L. (Eds.). Emotion in discourse (pp. 139–158). Netherlands: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Forth, G.
(1985) Right and left as a hierarchical opposition: Reflections on eastern Sumbanese hairstyles. In R. H. Barnes, D. de Coppet & R. J. Parkin (Eds.), Contexts and levels: Anthropological essays on hierarchy (pp. 103–116). Oxford: JASO.Google Scholar
Gebruers, N., Vanroy, C., Truijen, S., Engelborghs, S., & De Deyn, P. P.
(2010) Monitoring of physical activity after stroke: a systematic review of accelerometry-based measures. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 91(2), 288–297. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gibbs, Jr. R. W.
(2005) Embodiment and cognitive science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Granet, M.
(1973) Right and left in China, transl. by Rodney Needham. In R. Needham (Ed.), Right and left (pp. 43–58). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A.
(2010) The weirdest people in the world?. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(2–3), 61–83. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hertz, R.
(1909) La prééminence de la main droite: étude sur la polarité religieuse. Revue Philosophique de la France et de L’Étranger, 681, 553–580.Google Scholar
Holmes, K. J., Alcat, C., & Lourenco, S. F.
(2019) Is emotional magnitude spatialized? A further investigation. Cognitive Science, 43(4), e12727. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jang, C. H., Yang, H. S., Yang, H. E., Lee, S. Y., Kwon, J. W., Yun, B. D., & Jeong, H. W.
(2011) A survey on activities of daily living and occupations of upper extremity amputees. Annals of Rehabilitation Medicine, 35(6), 907–921. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kim, N., Krosnick, J., & Casasanto, D.
(2015) Moderators of candidate name-order effects in elections: An experiment. Political Psychology, 36(5), 525–542. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kong, F.
(2013) Space–valence associations depend on handedness: Evidence from a bimanual output task. Psychological Research, 77(6), 773–779. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kövecses, Z.
(2003) Metaphor and emotion: Language, culture, and body in human feeling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M.
(1980) Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago press.Google Scholar
Lee, A. Y., & Labroo, A. A.
(2004) The effect of conceptual and perceptual fluency on brand evaluation. Journal of Marketing Research, 41(2), 151–165. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Li, H., & Cao, Y.
(2019) The body in religion: The spatial mapping of valence in Tibetan practitioners of Bön. Cognitive Science, 43(4), e12728. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Loffing, F., Prelle, L., Heil, L., & Cañal-Bruland, R.
(2019) Body-specific influences on performance evaluation in realistic dynamic scenes. Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition, 24(3), 355–372. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Needham, R.
(1973) Right and left: Essays in dual symbolic classification. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Oppenheimer, D. M.
(2008) The secret life of fluency. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 121, 237–241. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Østlie, K., Lesjø, I. M., Franklin, R. J., Garfelt, B., Skjeldal, O. H., & Magnus, P.
(2012) Prosthesis rejection in acquired major upper-limb amputees: a population-based survey. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 7(4), 294–303.Google Scholar
Pitt, B., & Casasanto, D.
(2018) Spatializing emotion: No evidence for a domain-general magnitude system. Cognitive Science, 42(7), 2150–2180. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reber, R., Schwarz, N., & Winkielman, P.
(2004) Processing fluency and aesthetic pleasure: Is beauty in the perceiver’s processing experience?. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8(4), 364–382. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reber, R., Winkielman, P., & Schwarz, N.
(1998) Effects of perceptual fluency on affective judgments. Psychological Science, 91, 45–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Song, X., Chen, J., & Proctor, R. W.
(2017) Role of hand dominance in mapping preferences for emotional-valence words to keypress responses. Acta Psychologica, 1801, 33–39. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Song, X., Yi, F., Zhang, J., & Proctor, R. W.
(2019) Left is “good”: Observed action affects the association between horizontal space and affective valence. Cognition, 1931, 104030. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Swinnen, S. P., Walter, C. B., Lee, T. D., & Serrien, D. J.
(1993) Acquiring bimanual skills: Contrasting forms of information feedback for interlimb decoupling. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 19(6), 1328.Google Scholar
Teasell, R., Bayona, N. A., & Bitensky, J.
(2005) Plasticity and reorganization of the brain post stroke. Topics in Stroke Rehabilitation, 12(3), 11–26. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Veale, J. F.
(2014) Edinburgh handedness inventory–short form: A revised version based on confirmatory factor analysis. Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition, 19(2), 164–177. DOI logoGoogle Scholar