LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION AS GUIDED EXPERIENCE

Rolf A. Zwaan
Barbara Kaup
Robert A. Stanfield
Carol J. Madden

Florida State University


KEY WORDS: comprehension, embodied cognition, language, mental representation,
mental simulation, situation model


Address all correspondence to:
Dr. Rolf A. Zwaan
Department of Psychology
Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL 32306-1270
phone: 850-644-2768
FAX:  850-644-7739
zwaan@psy.fsu.edu



ABSTRACT (SHORT)
	Language comprehension is best viewed as guided experience.
The linguistic input provides cues to the human brain as to how to 
construct experiential simulations of the state of affairs it 
denotes. We show that this view of language comprehension is 
consistent with a range of extant evidence in a variety of fields, 
ranging from historical linguistics to cognitive neuroscience. We 
furthermore discuss new evidence that directly supports the 
experience-based view. We argue that the prevailing amodal view of 
language comprehension is unable to coherently account for this 
evidence.

ABSTRACT (LONG)
	Most models of language comprehension assume that it entails 
(1) the conversion of the verbal input into amodal propositions and 
(2) the integration of these propositions as well as propositions 
derived from semantic long-term memory into a coherent network. In 
contrast to this "network-building" view, we propose to view language 
comprehension as guided experience. According to this proposal, the 
verbal input provides a set of cues to the comprehender on how to run 
mental simulations (in the manner proposed by Barsalou: Perceptual 
Symbol  Systems", BBS 22(4), 1999) of the events described, such that 
comprehension becomes equivalent to a vicarious experience of those 
events. We show that this proposed view is consistent with evidence 
from a variety of fields, ranging from historical linguistics to 
cognitive neuroscience. We furthermore discuss new experimental 
evidence that directly supports our view and is not predicted by the 
network-building view. The network-building view is unable to 
coherently account for this evidence. We conclude that viewing 
language comprehension as guided experience provides a powerful 
searchlight onto this fundamental human cognitive skill.

1. Introduction

1.1. The nature of language comprehension
	The prevailing view in cognitive science has been that 
language comprehension is the construction of a coherent mental 
representation consisting of the propositions that are expressed by 
the verbal input, augmented with propositions derived from background 
knowledge if presupposed by the verbal input. We propose a different 
view. Language comprehension is guided experience where by language 
forms a complex set of cues (footnote 1) on how to construct an 
experiential representation of the state of affairs it describes.  A 
record of the verbal input may be kept as well.
	This proposal breaks with the standard view in two ways.
First, it defines the goal of language comprehension as the 
construction of a mental representation of the referential situation, 
rather than of the input itself.  This constructivist view is of 
course not new (e.g., Bower & Morrow 1990;Gernsbacher 1990; Graesser, 
Millis, & Zwaan 1997; Graesser, Singer, & Trabasso 1994; 
Johnson-Laird 1983; Sanford & Garrod 1981; van Dijk & Kintsch 1983; 
Zwaan & Radvansky 1998). However, our proposal is a more radical 
version of this view in that it assumes that the building blocks of 
situation models are perceptual symbols derived from how we perceive 
and interact with the environment (Barsalou 1999) and not amodal 
propositions. Until now, situation models have typically been viewed 
as constructed from amodal propositions (e.g., Kintsch 1998; but see 
Johnson-Laird 1983; Johnson-Laird, Herrmann, & Chaffin 1984; Sanford 
& Garrod 1998). In our view, perceptual symbol systems provide a more 
natural representational format for conceptualizing situation models 
than amodal propositions. We will show that the view of language 
comprehension as guided experience is consistent with a range of 
literature that the amodal- propositional view cannot readily account 
for.
	Various other researchers have proposed perceptually grounded 
embodied views of cognition (e.g., Barsalou 1999; Bisiach 1988; 
Glenberg 1997; Goldstone
& Barsalou 1998; Harnad 1990; Johnson 1987; Johnson-Laird 1983; 
Lakoff 1987; MacWhinney 1999). Our proposal is similar in spirit. 
However, we focus specifically on language comprehension. Given that 
most of the language comprehension research has focused on 
narratives, we will focus on narrative comprehension in what follows. 
However, in section 8.3.1. we examine whether and how the view of 
language comprehension as guided experience can be extended to other 
text genres.

1.2. Main claims
Our main claims are as follows:
         _ Comprehending language is based on how we experience our environment.
We routinely construct, maintain, and update situation models of our 
environment (e.g., Damasio 1999). Language comprehension allows us to 
do this vicariously.
         _ Language comprehension involves perceptual symbols 
(Barsalou 1999). We do not claim that perceptual symbols are only 
constructed under special conditions in language comprehension. 
Rather, we claim that such symbols are constructed routinely.
        _ Linguistic expressions are cues to the mind/brain as to how 
to construct situation models. Linguistic cues allow us to take a 
perspective within the referential world from which we construct our 
models.
         _ The construction of situation models based on verbal input 
involves the same brain areas that are involved in the construction 
and maintenance of experience-based situation models. This implies 
that language comprehension involves a variety of brain areas, much 
more than the traditional language areas (Broca's and Wernicke's 
areas).
         _ The mind/brain may keep a record of the verbal input, but 
this is not critical to comprehension once a referential experiential 
representation has been established. We hypothesize that the record 
of the verbal input is an experiential representation of the input 
itself and not an amodal representation of the propositions expressed 
by the input.
	We adduce evidence from various fields, ranging from 
historical linguistics to neuroimaging, in support of each of these 
claims. However, we begin with a discussion of what might be viewed 
as the standard view of language comprehension in general and text 
comprehension in particular.


2.0 Theories of comprehension

2.1. The propositional view
	The amodal conceptualization of language comprehension can be 
summarized as follows. Comprehenders transform the verbal input into 
propositions and connect these propositions when they share an 
argument. Whenever it is impossible to connect an incoming 
proposition to the propositions already in working memory (WM), a 
"coherence gap" occurs, and comprehenders use their background 
knowledge to generate a "text-connecting" or "bridging" inference, a 
proposition derived from semantic or episodic long-term memory (LTM) 
that has an argument in common with the proposition(s) currently in 
WM and with the incoming proposition.  Furthermore, the amodal 
conceptualization of text comprehension assumes that readers may 
occasionally make "elaborative inferences," propositions from 
background knowledge that share an argument with the incoming 
proposition, but do not serve to connect it to the propositions 
already in WM.
	This view was most comprehensively discussed in an 
influential article by Kintsch and van Dijk (1978), but similar ideas 
can be found elsewhere, for instance in an early textbook on 
psycholinguistics (Clark & Clark 1977) and still underlies various 
more recent conceptualizations of language comprehension (e.g., 
McKoon & Ratcliff 1992; Myers & O'Brien 1998). The Kintsch and van 
Dijk model was successful with respect to the task it was designed 
for: the prediction of the recall likelihood of text statements. 
However, although Kintsch and van Dijk were quick to acknowledge the 
limitations of their model and saw propositions more as a "convenient 
shorthand," this did not prevent many researchers from adopting their 
model as the model of language comprehension.

2.2. Situation models
	Van Dijk and Kintsch (1983) and Johnson-Laird (1983) proposed 
that language comprehension entails more than merely the construction 
of a textbase. Specifically, it is tantamount to the construction of 
a mental representation of the state of affairs described in the 
linguistic input, a mental model or situation model. Similar ideas 
had been proposed in linguistics and philosophy (e.g., Habel 1986; 
Hangkamer & Sag 1976; Jackendoff 1983; Kamp 1981). 	A great deal 
of empirical evidence has been amassed for the situation- model view 
reviewed in Zwaan & Radvansky 1998). This evidence suggests that 
comprehenders are influenced by their experience with the type of 
situation that is being described, rather than by the propositional 
structure of the verbal input.  Consider the following sentences:
1a 	The actress walked onto the stage. A moment later she collapsed.
1b 	The actress walked onto the stage. An hour later she collapsed.
	In a propositional analysis, the propositions derived from 
these two sentences would be connected through argument overlap to 
yield an interconnected network of propositions, the textbase, 
representing the meaning of the verbal input. For example, the 
predicates WALK and COLLAPSE share the argument ACTRESS. In addition, 
LATER can be interpreted as LATER-THAN-THAT, whereby THAT refers to 
the most recently processed proposition, and thus results in the 
complex proposition LATER-THAN([WALK[ACTRESS,ONTO STAGE]]). The time 
adverbs moment and hour would simply modify this proposition, but 
would otherwise be irrelevant with respect to the structure of the 
textbase. However, Zwaan (1996) found that  the two temporal 
expressions differentially impact processing. For example, when 
subjects are presented with the verb mentioned in the first sentence 
(e.g., walked) and are asked to indicate (by quickly pressing a YES 
or NO key) whether or not the word appeared in the text, they do this 
reliably more quickly when the time interval is small (as in moment) 
compared to when it is long (e.g., hour or day). Thus, the verb is 
more accessible to the comprehender when it denotes an event that is 
temporally close to the current state of affairs in the story than 
when it denotes a temporally more distant event (see Anderson, 
Garrod, & Sanford 1983; Carreiras, Cariedo, Alonso, & Fernandez 1997; 
Rinck & Bower, in press, for converging evidence).
	Findings such as these are difficult to explain from the view 
that language comprehension can be modeled as the construction of a 
coherent network of propositions. However, they are exactly what 
would be predicted if we assume that comprehension involves taking a 
perspective within the referential situation and then constructing a 
mental representation (see also MacWhinney 1999). In the referential 
situation, the event of WALKING is still close in time to the current 
event (COLLAPSING) in the moment version, but not in the hour version 
and hence the difference in response latencies.
	The two decades worth of studies reviewed by Zwaan and 
Radvansky show similar effects for dimensions other than time, such 
as space, causation, motivation, and protagonist. Although this 
evidence is consistent with an experience-based view of language 
comprehension, it lacks specificity with respect to the structure and 
content of situation models. We believe this is due to a combination 
of a narrow (and often implicit) theoretical focus and methodological 
limitations.

2.3. Theoretical and methodological limitations
	In the theoretical arena, situation-model research has been 
motivated more by the goal to demonstrate that the textbase is 
insufficient to capture the essence of comprehension than by the goal 
to delineate what situation models  are. An uncharitable conclusion 
about the research might be that the situation model is whatever the 
textbase is not. Often, situation models appear to be viewed as mere 
addenda to the textbase, or as a mechanism enabling the construction 
of a coherent textbase. As such, this view puts the cart before the 
horse. In the methodological arena, situation model researchers have 
relied mostly on reaction-time measures. Although informative with 
regard to ease of integration and the activation levels of 
information, these measures are not the optimal tools to provide a 
window into the nature of the mental representation.
	Two developments will enable us to overcome these limitations 
and examine the contents of situation models more closely and thus 
test the assumption inherent in the situation-model view (but rarely 
made explicit) that language comprehension is guided experience. In 
the theoretical arena, frameworks have been developed to view 
language as relying on basic perceptual/experiential representations, 
chiefly in linguistics (e.g., Heine 1997; Johnson 1987; Lakoff 1987; 
Lakoff & Johnson 1980; Langacker 1987; Talmy 1988) and more recently 
also in cognitive psychology (Barsalou 1999; Glenberg 1997; Goldstone 
& Barsalou 1998; Harnad 1990; Kelter, in press; MacWhinney 1999) and 
neuropsychology (Bisiach 1988). The experience-based framework makes 
specific predictions about the content of situation models, which are 
amenable to empirical tests. Thus, a theoretical framework and 
representational format now exist that can be used to generate 
specific predictions with regard to the experiential nature of 
situation models. As such, experience-based theories throw a new 
searchlight (Popper 1985) on language comprehension.
	Second, there are two advances in the methodological domain 
that will enable research into the perceptual nature of situation 
models. First, brain imaging techniques such as PET (positron 
emission tomography), fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) 
enable researchers to examine and localize patterns of activation in 
the brain as a function of exposure to verbal stimuli. As such, these 
methods provide information with regard to the potential overlap in 
brain areas activated by experience and by language comprehension. In 
addition, it is possible to use different behavioral measures to 
examine experiential aspects of comprehension, e.g., the presentation 
of pictorial stimuli. We will discuss  recent research using these 
methods in sections 3. and 5.

2.4  Situation models and representations of the verbal input
	Researchers have proposed multi-level kinds of mental 
representations that accommodate both mental representations of the 
verbal input (its surface structure or its propositional structure) 
and mental representations of the referential situation (e.g., 
Anderson 1983; Johnson-Laird 1983; Kintsch 1998; Paivio 1971). There 
seems to be general agreement that language comprehension involves 
both a record of the verbal input and a mental representation of the 
described state of affairs. Furthermore, there are no unequivocal 
proposals regarding the representational format of situation models. 
For example, while  Kintsch (1998) views situation models primarily 
in terms of propositional networks, he also allows for the 
possibility that aspects of situation models are encoded as mental 
images, a position that appears consistent with Anderson (1983). 
Johnson-Laird (1996), on the other hand draws, a distinction between 
mental models and mental images, the former being more abstract than 
the latter.
	Barsalou (1999) recently proposed a view of situation models 
as perceptual simulations, mental representations involving 
perceptual symbols, records of neural activation that occurs when 
events in the environment or in the observer's body are perceived. 
This view offers a more natural account of situation-model 
construction than does the amodal view and as such, it is central to 
our main thesis. It will be discussed in more detail in section 2.6. 
We furthermore derive from Barsalou's proposal the idea that if a 
representation of the verbal input is stored in LTM, it is stored in 
the form of schematic  perceptual symbols of the experiential states 
of hearing or seeing words. As we will argue in section 7, these 
representations can be used to derive referential meaning, but are as 
such not representations thereof.

2.5. Experience-based representations as the building blocks of cognition.
	Our view trades on the assumption that people are able to 
segment the information coming in during direct experience into 
meaningful units, e.g., events and objects. Researchers from various 
research domains have made the same  assumption (e.g., Croft 1998; 
Donald 1991; Gibson 1979; Goldberg 1998; Johnson 1987; Lakoff 1987; 
Langacker 1987; Nelson 1996; Talmy 1988; Zacks & Tversky, in press; 
Zwaan & Radvansky 1998; Zwaan 1999). Zacks and Tversky (in press) 
discuss a range of evidence from a variety of disciplines attesting 
to the human ability to carve up the perceptual stream into events. 
Specifically, the human perceptual system is attuned to changes in 
the environment and instances of maximal perceptual change are used 
as cues for where to place event boundaries (Newtson, Engquist, & 
Bois 1977). Thus, we assume that experience-based representations 
form the building blocks of language comprehension. With many others, 
we assume that these event representations are extracted from direct 
experience and are stored as such in the brain, where they can be 
reactivated by verbal input, leading to an experiential simulation of 
the event in question (cf. Barsalou 1999).

2.6. Situation models as experiential simulations
	Following Barsalou (1999), we view situation models as 
perceptual simulations, although we use the broader, and in our view 
more appropriate, term experiential simulations. Barsalou (1999, p. 
641) defines perceptual simulations as "the top-down activation of 
sensory-motor areas to reenact perceptual experience." In the case of 
language comprehension, it is the verbal input that serves as cues to 
activate and integrate perceptual symbols stored in LTM into 
experiential simulations (see section 5 for a detailed discussion). 
Thus, in contrast to existing situation model theories of discourse 
comprehension, we consider situation models to be dynamic 
representations (Freyd 1992), the building blocks of which are 
experiential event simulations.


3.0. Claim 1: language comprehension is experientially-based

3.1 Language and displacement
	Language use is an exclusively human capability and 
perspective taking is one of its essential characteristics. There are 
several features that set language apart from other forms of 
communication, but of particular interest here is the feature of 
displacement (Hockett 1959). While humans must have already had the 
ability to mentally represent interpretations of non-present 
situations, the advent of language made it possible to communicate 
those interpretations to other minds. Thus, with language, 
communication was no longer bound to the "here-and-now" of the 
immediate physical surroundings and humans were enabled to take 
different perspectives. As such, displacement allows us to convey 
events in ways that deviate from our everyday experience. For 
example, we can describe events in orders different than their 
chronological order, something Aristotle considered a hallmark of 
fiction (Poetics, trans. 1967)

3.2. Mimetic competence
	The  primary function of language is to convey a mental 
representation of an actual ("The roads are slippery"), a desired 
("Please close the door"), an undesired ("Don't walk on the grass"), 
or even a fictitious ("If I were a millionaire .....") state of 
affairs from one mind to another. It makes sense to assume that some 
ability to mentally represent and understand events in the world was 
already present in hominids before the advent of language. Donald 
(1998) refers to this as episodic competence: "Remembering and 
responding to social situations is a complex multi-channel task that 
demands the integrated use of several brain functions. One of these 
functions is social event-perception, and its corollary, event 
parsing, which includes an implicit understanding of the agents, 
their interactions, their effects on the contingencies of action, and 
the consequences of perceived episodes." (pp. 58- 59).
	Episodic competence makes substantial demands on attentional and WM 
resources, given that models of the environment need to be maintained 
and constantly updated as (social) situations change. It became 
especially important when cultures of ever-increasing complexity 
started developing. Donald argues that mimetic skill, the skill to 
mentally and physically simulate events, can be viewed as the basis 
for early hominid accomplishments, such as toolmaking. To make a 
tool, one has to envision its purpose, choose a material, and design 
a shape that best meet the constraints of the human body and hand and 
of the object that the tool is designed to operate on. In other 
words, one needs to form a situation model of the event of using the 
tool before one is made. This skill provides a foundation for the 
development of language, because it underlies human conventionality. 
Donald proposes that the brain areas involved in creating this 
behavior form an executive suite, which includes: Prefrontal cortex, 
tertiary areas of the parietal-temporal cortex and most of the 
insula, cingulate gyrus and hippocampus, plus midline thalamus and 
basal ganglia. The availability of the left-hemisphere areas for 
language allowed hominids to convey situation models from one brain 
to another through the medium of language.

3.3. Body and environment as templates
	The origin of language itself can be viewed in perceptual 
terms (Heine 1997). For example, the human body has functioned as a 
template for the development of all human number systems. In 
languages such as English, this is expressed only in the decimal 
number system, corresponding to our fingers. However, in other 
languages, the perceptual origin of the number system is more 
transparent. For example, in the Central Sudanic language Mamvu, the 
word for six is "the hand seizes one" and for 10 it is "all hands" 
and for 20 "one whole person." Similarly, spatial terms in a variety 
of languages are based on three models: the human body in an upright 
position, environmental landmarks, and dynamic concepts (Heine 1997; 
Svorou 1994).
	Basic perceptual representations can be metaphorically and 
metonymically extended to instances that ostensibly show a less 
direct perceptual origin. Lakoff (1987) discusses how the Japanese 
classifier hon is typically used to classify long and thin objects, 
such as sticks, pencils, hair, trees, and ropes, but is extended to 
refer to martial arts contests involving long and rigid objects such 
as staffs and swords and even to martial arts contests that do not 
involve staffs or swords. Given that staffs and swords are the 
primary functional objects in martial arts such as kendo, they are 
associated with the primary goal of matches. Therefore, hon is also 
associated with a win. A similar conceptual extension underlies the 
use of hon with respect to baseball. For example, hon classifies hits 
in baseball that involve a straight trajectory. Lakoff argues that 
this is motivated by two reasons. First, straight trajectories 
resemble the image schema of a long and thin object. Second, hits 
are the primary goal of baseball. Because ground balls, foul balls 
and pop flies don't meet either of these criteria, they are not 
typically classified by hon.

3.4. The structure of verbal descriptions
The experiential origin of language is also reflected in the typical 
structure of verbal descriptions. For example, the default order in 
which events are narrated is their chronological order (Dowty 1986). 
Thus, the order in which events were perceived to occur in a real or 
fictional situation is a major mechanism for structuring verbal 
descriptions. It has been demonstrated empirically that deviations 
from chronological order, as in Before he patted the dog, he jumped 
the fence lead to (minor) processing difficulties compared to their 
chronology-respecting counterparts(Mandler 1986; Muente, Schilz, & 
Kutas 1998).
	Another example is the "strong iconicity assumption" (Zwaan 
1996), according to which comprehenders expect consecutively narrated 
events to have occurred in a temporally contiguous fashion, unless 
told otherwise. Consistent with this principle, Grimes (1975, p. 36) 
observed that in Kate, a language of Papua New Guinea, temporally 
contiguous events are grammatically separated from events "that are 
separated by a lapse in which nothing of significance for the story 
happens." Zwaan (1996) provided empirical support for the 
strong-iconicity assumption. Consecutively narrated events are more 
easily understood when they occurred consecutively in the narrated 
situation than when there is a time lapse (as in "an hour later"). 
Findings such as this support the claim that comprehending such a 
verbal description means constructing an experiential representation 
of the described states of affairs.

3.5. Ontogenesis of language ability
	3.5.1. Mental event representations. Pre-verbal children parse incoming
information into meaningful representations not only of objects and 
spatial arrangements (Mandler 1996), but also of sequences of events 
(Nelson 1996). These representations provide a cognitive scaffolding 
for the child's acquisition of language. While it is relatively easy 
to see how children form perceptual representations of objects, 
events are by nature evanescent. However, Wynn (1996) demonstrated 
that 6-month-old infants are able to individuate actions by using 
perceptual cues. This is quite easy when temporal boundaries consist 
of a contrast between motion and nonmotion. However, the infants were 
even able to segment streams of continuous action. The underlying 
mechanisms by which they achieve this are not well understood. One 
hypothesis (e.g., Zacks & Tversky, in press) is that they involve 
being able to detect the transition from one kind of motion into 
another kind of motion. In other words, the infants use moments of 
maximal perceptual change as cues for establishing event boundaries. 
Another hypothesis is that events become cognitive entities after 
they have been repeatedly experienced in different contexts (Avrahami 
& Kareev 1994).
	3.5.2.  Construction grammar. Atomic events underlie the 
acquisition not only of words, but also of argument structures (e.g., 
Croft 1998; Goldberg 1998). Argument structures carry meaning and 
correspond to basic perceptual events (Lakoff 1987; Langacker 1987; 
Talmy 1988). For example, in English the basic event of caused motion 
(X causing Y to move Z) takes the following form: 
Subject-Verb-Object-Oblique. This construction corresponds to the 
light verb put, which is acquired by children at a young age. Once 
learned, this construction can be used to understand sentences such 
as Pat sneezed the foam off the cappuccino despite the fact that 
sneeze is an intransitive verb (see Goldberg 1998 for a discussion). 
The process here is one of metaphorical extension (e.g., Lakoff 1987).

3.6. Evidence on being "in" the referential situation
	Much of the literature on situation models (as reviewed in 
Zwaan & Radvansky 1998) can be construed as consistent with the 
experience-based view advanced here. For example, Zwaan (1999) 
proposed that the evidence is consistent with the view that 
comprehenders behave as if they are "in" the narrated situation (see 
also Gerrig, 1993). Mental representations of objects that are "in" 
or relevant to the current situation are more activated than those of 
objects that are not (e.g., Glenberg, Meyer, & Lindem 1987; MacDonald 
& Just 1989; Morrow, Bower, & Greenspan 1989; Morrow, Greenspan & 
Bower 1987; Rinck & Bower 1995), events that are currently ongoing in 
the situation are more activated in the comprehender's WM than events 
that are not (Magliano & Schleich 2000; Rinck & Bower, in press; 
Zwaan 1996; Zwaan et al., in press), protagonists that are in the 
current situation are more activated than protagonists that are no 
longer (Anderson, Garrod, & Sanford 1987; Carreiras et al. 1997), 
goals that have not been accomplished yet are more activated than 
accomplished goals (Trabasso & Suh 1993). Moreover, readers assume 
the spatial perspective of a protagonist in the story (Bower, Black, 
& Turner 1979; Bryant, Tversky, & Franklin 1992; Franklin & Tversky 
1990; Morrow & Clark 1989; Rall & Harris 2000).
	This shift from an environmental perspective to a perspective 
within the referential world, made possible because of the feature of 
displacement (Hockett 1959), has been termed the "deictic shift" 
(Duchan, Bruder, & Hewitt 1995; Gerrig, 1993). Recent evidence 
suggests that children learn perspective taking and situation model 
construction from language at a very early age (Rall & Harris 2000). 
Like adults, three and four-year-olds  recall deictic verbs of 
motion, such as come and go and bring and take more accurately if 
they are consistent with the perspective of the protagonist than if 
they are not, suggesting that they assume the perspective of the 
protagonist.


4.0. Claim 2:  Perceptual symbols are used in language comprehension

4.1. Perceptual processes and representations in language comprehension
	Stanfield and Zwaan (in press) conducted a direct test of the 
experience- based view. They presented subjects with sentences such 
as Rick put the pencil in the cup and Rick put the pencil in the 
drawer. The sentence was followed after 250 ms by a picture of an 
object that was or was not denoted by the sentence. On critical 
trials, the pictured object had been mentioned in the sentence (e.g., 
pencil) and was presented in one of two orientations: vertical or 
horizontal, thus creating a match or a mismatch with the implied 
orientation of the object mentioned in the sentence. The subjects 
responded as quickly as possible whether the picture depicted an 
object mentioned in the sentence. Stanfield and Zwaan found that 
recognition responses were significantly faster when there was a 
match between the implied orientation and the orientation of the 
picture than when there was a mismatch (838 ms vs. 882 ms). Amodal 
propositional theories do not predict such a finding, given that the 
sentences did not state anything about the object's orientation and 
given that no amodal theory predicts that comprehenders make 
inferences about object orientation when presented with verbal 
stimuli such as these.  Of course, the finding is exactly what would 
be predicted by the experience-based view.
	Klatzky, Pellegrino, McCloskey, and Doherty (1989) found that 
the comprehension of verbally described actions was facilitated by 
primes specifying the relevant hand shape, which subjects had been 
trained to enact previously. For example, sensibility judgments for 
phrases such as inserting a key or picking a grape were faster when 
preceded by the prime finger grasp. Having ruled out alternate 
explanations, Klatzky et al. interpret these findings as suggesting 
that a cognitive/motoric simulation of the hand shape was responsible 
for the priming effect. In the terminology used here, the perceptual 
symbol for the hand shape was activated by the prime word and was 
then readily available for the experiential simulation of the 
described action.
	Morrow and Clark (1989) observed that comprehenders' 
interpretation of Motion words, such as "approach" depends on 
physical characteristics of the situation. Specifically, it depends 
on the size of the object and the landmark. For example, in "The 
mouse approached the fence" subjects represented the mouse as being 
much closer to the fence than they did the tractor in "The tractor 
approached the fence". Similarly, the tractor would be closer to the 
landmark in The tractor approached the fence than in The tractor 
approached the farm. It seems that an embodied-perceptual account 
could explain this more readily than an amodal symbolic system. For 
how would the various meaning gradations of action verbs be 
represented in such a system? It would seem unlikely that we have 
stored multiple copies of "approach" in which its meaning is defined 
relative to specific combinations of objects and landmarks (see sect. 
5.5. for a discussion on compositionality).


5.0. Claim 3: Language as processing cues

5.1. Towards a taxonomy of processing cues
	Cognitive linguists view language as a set of processing 
instructions to the comprehender so as to construct a mental 
representation of the described states of affairs (e.g., Givon 1992; Langacker 
1987; Talmy 1988). Based in part on this research, as well as on 
research on situation models, we propose a taxonomy of processing 
cues on which we distinguish between construction and profiling cues 
on the one hand and integration cues on the other. Construction and 
profiling cues both involve the construction of single event 
representations, whereas integration cues involve the manner in which 
the event currently being simulated is integrated with the evolving 
situation model. It should be noted that our distinction between 
construction/profiling on the one hand and integration is based on 
the nature of the processes involved, not on their temporal order. 
Thus, we do not necessarily want to claim that construction/profiling 
always precedes integration.

5.2 Construction cues
	Apart from the nature of the representations involved, the modal and
amodal views make similar claims about construction cues. Linguistic 
forms are cues to the comprehender to activate information from 
semantic or episodic LTM into WM and use them as the building blocks 
for mental representations. On the amodal view, these representations 
are stored amodally in LTM and on the perceptual view, they are 
stored as perceptual symbols. Thus, the two examples provided below 
are not diagnostic with respect to the viability of our experiential 
view of language comprehension, but provide a characterization of the 
process we have in mind.
	The most basic construction cues are indefinite noun phrases 
(NPs) and verb phrases (VPs). An indefinite NP can be viewed as a cue 
to introduce a perceptual symbol in the situation model standing for 
an entity with the properties denoted by the noun and possibly 
included modifiers such as, for instance, adjectives. Examples for 
entities introduced by an indefinite NP are objects (e.g., a house, a 
green tomato), people (e.g., a farmer; a cute little boy), abstract 
entities (e.g., a good idea, freedom), or events (e.g., a festival, a 
brutal beating). In contrast to indefinite NPs, definite NPs do not 
usually trigger the construction of a new perceptual symbol but 
rather act as a signal to reactivate a symbol that is already part of 
the integrated episodic memory representation constructed for the 
purpose of assigning a new property to it or a new relation to it and 
other tokens. As another example, verb phrases with spatial 
prepositions instruct the comprehender how to assemble the denoted 
entities into a spatial configuration. Thus, for example, above is an 
instruction to place a perceptual symbol denoting one entity above 
that denoting another entity in the representation. This is the 
meaning of above.

5.3. Profiling cues
	Profiling can be likened to directing attention, and 
figure-ground separation (Langacker 1987). By profiling, speakers and 
writers control what information about a situation becomes activated 
in the comprehender's mind/brain by specifying which components are 
figures and which are ground, or by simply directing the 
comprehender's attention to a specific aspect of the event. Our 
visual attention system is extremely selective, such that we often 
fail to notice what afterwards appear as blatant changes in our 
visual field, a phenomenon known as change blindness (e.g., Rensink, 
O'Regan, & Clark 1997; Simons & Levin 1997). If our visual cognitive 
system constructs representations only as needed and lets them 
disintegrate when attention shifts, we would not expect our cognitive 
system to be more constructive when the input is not directly 
perceptual, but verbal. Thus, profiling is not just a quirk of 
language. Profiling implies that we do not simply convey a situation, 
we convey a specific interpretation of that situation. For example, 
"The shark is below the seal" does not yield the same representation 
as "The seal is above the shark" (although it would in an amodal 
propositional representation). In the first case, the shark is the 
figure and the seal is the ground, whereas in the second case figure 
and ground are reversed (Langacker 1987). Thus, although both 
sentences describe the same spatial layout, they profile the 
situation differently. In perceptual terms, what we are doing here, 
is manipulating the focus of attention in the perceptual field.
	Consistent with this view, McKoon, Ward, Ratcliff, and Sproat 
(1993) found that sentences such as However, lately he's taken up 
deer hunting leads to a reduced accessibility of DEER compared with 
However, lately he's taken up hunting deer. Again, this difference 
would not be captured in an amodal propositional system, as both 
sentences would have the same propositionalese translation HUNT(he, 
Deer) (see Perfetti & Britt 1995 for a discussion). However, it does 
provide evidence for the role of syntactic structures in profiling 
representations. In deer hunting, the entire activity is profiled 
(e.g., against an implied background of other leisure activities, 
such as sailing or skiing). In contrast, hunting deer profiles deer 
with respect to a background of other potential targets, e.g., ducks 
or bears. Thus, one would expect DEER to be more activated in the 
latter case than in the former. Context might profile a property of 
an object. For example, subjects confirm more quickly that tomatoes 
are round than that tomatoes are red after reading a sentence such as 
The little girl found a tomato to roll across the floor with her nose 
that emphasizes their roundness (McKoon & Ratcliff 1988; see also 
Tabossi & Johnson-Laird 1980).
	Another way to profile events is through the use of verb 
aspect (Croft 1998; ter Meulen 1995; Vendler 1967; Verkuyl 1972). 
Verb aspect profiles the temporal contour of events. For example, in 
He swept the floor, the action of sweeping is profiled as punctual 
and completed. Of course, world knowledge tells us that sweeping is 
not a punctuate activity, but linguistic analyses suggest that this 
is how it should be interpreted. On the other hand He was sweeping 
the floor profiles the action as extended through time. The simple 
past tense describes the action of sweeping as punctual and can thus 
be viewed as "a semantic ticket to disregard change internal to the 
described event, to treat it as atomic and close off its internal 
structure to further description" (ter Meulen 1995, p. 12). On the 
other hand, the progressive profiles the action as ongoing. As such, 
it opens up its internal structure.
	Zwaan and Stanfield (submitted) investigated this prediction 
empirically. They presented subjects with sentences such as The 
teacher swept the floor and The teacher began sweeping the floor, 
embedded in short narratives. The sentences were followed by a word 
denoting an instrument typically used in the action (a broom in this 
case). In a condition where the broom had not been previously 
mentioned in the text, the correct recognition response was NO. 
Subjects were reliably slower in making a correct rejection when the 
action was described as ongoing than when it was described as 
punctual. This finding, as well as Zwaan and Stanfield's additional 
findings, supports the view that verb aspect is a cue to profile 
events.
	Perspective of description can also be considered a profiling 
cue. A sentence such as Susan was sitting in the living room when 
Bill came in profiles the situation from the perspective of Susan 
whereas the sentence Susan was sitting in the living room when Bill 
went in profiles the situation from the perspective of Bill. Both 
adult and preschool comprehenders have been demonstrated to assume a 
protagonist's perspective (Bower, Black & Turner 1979; O'Brien & 
Albrecht 1992; Rall & Harris 2000).
	Another way to profile is to make use of pragmatically marked 
constructions. As was mentioned above, the definite article is 
usually used in cases in which the corresponding entity is already 
available to the addressee. Using the definite article in a context 
in which the corresponding entity is not already available to the 
addressee, can be considered a means to highlight the corresponding 
entity and does indeed lead to enhanced activation for its mental 
representation (Gernsbacher & Schroyer 1989).
	Choosing an adequate level of grain size is also a matter of profiling. 
Plural expressions such as the children or they seem to function as a 
signal to the reader/listener not to distinguish between the 
individuals and to represent only one token (standing for all the 
children referred to), whereas partitioning plural expressions such 
as several of the children or both signals for the individuals to be 
kept distinct (Kaup, Kelter, & Habel, submitted). This difference is, 
for instance, evidenced by responses to a sentence-interpretation 
task, in which subjects were told that each of a list of sentences 
refers to two particular individuals. Notwithstanding the 
instruction, subjects interpreted sentences differently depending on 
whether or not the subject NP was they or both. A sentence such as 
Both bought two bars of chocolate was interpreted as describing a 
situation in which four chocolate bars were bought, whereas a 
sentence such as They bought two bars of chocolate was interpreted as 
describing a situation in which only two chocolate bars were bought.
	There are various other profiling cues. One example is voice 
(active vs. passive). By saying "Reggie fouled Shaquille," we make 
Reggie the figure and Shaquille the ground whereas the reverse is 
accomplished by "Shaquille was fouled by Reggie." Thus, in the first 
case we may be led to wonder about Reggie's motives, whereas in the 
second case we may wonder about the consequences for Shaquille. 
Another example is manner of reference (e.g., proper name vs. role). 
Introducing a character with a proper name usually signals that this 
is the main character of a story whereas introducing a character by 
his or her role name (e.g., "the waitress"), typically signals a 
scenario-bound character (Anderson, Garrod, & Sanford 1983), that is, 
a character bound to only one of the settings of  a story (e.g., a 
restaurant). The main character is more likely to become the vantage 
point from which the reader experiences the story than a 
scenario-bound character. It is important to note that different 
languages may profile different aspects of a situation. For example, 
when English speakers use hang for hanging up a coat, they profile 
the orientation of the coat and not how it is attached. In contrast, 
when speakers of Korean use kelta to denote the same action, they 
profile how the coat is attached and not its orientation (Bowerman 
1996).

5.4. Integration cues
	Integration cues guide the integration of the constructed 
event representation constructed in WM with the ongoing simulaton. 
For example, the current simulation may involve the same agent as the 
previous simulation, or the same location, time, or object, or all of 
the above. In all this, integration cues is to inform comprehenders 
which elements from previous simulations should be reactivated into 
WM to be reused in the current simulation. Recent 
electrophysiological evidence suggests that integration at the 
discourse level is a rapid process (van Berkum, Hagoort, & Brown 
1999). When a sentence contradicts an earlier sentence, a negative 
going brain wave is generated, which peaks around 400 ms. This 
so-called N400 also occurs when a word does not fit in with the 
sentence in which it occurs. These findings suggest that integration 
at the discourse level is at least as rapid as integration at the 
sentence level. Several other theories have been proposed with regard 
to the integration of discourse (e.g., Gernsbacher 1990; Kintsch & 
van Dijk 1978; Kintsch 1988; Myers & O'Brien 1998), but none from a 
perceptual perspective. These theories explicitly or implicitly 
assume a propositional point of view and regard text comprehension as 
the integration of propositions whereas we propose that comprehension 
involves the incorporation of elements from previous mental 
simulations into current mental simulations.
	There is a variety of integration cues in language. Some of 
the most obvious ones are definite NPs and sentential connectives 
such as and, then, because, and however. As noted in the previous 
section, definite NPs are cues to reactivate already represented 
information for the purpose of assigning further properties to the 
representation. Sentential connectives, on the other hand, connect 
simulations, typically on temporal and causal dimensions. Particular 
VPs explicitly tell the comprehender to discontinue a simulation, as 
in "John was playing the piano. When his mother came in he stopped." 
Here, the final verb phrase stopped tells the comprehender to 
discontinue the simulation of John playing the piano. If the final 
verb had been continued, this would have been a cue to maintain the 
simulation of John playing the piano. Indeed, Zwaan, Madden, and 
Whitten (in press) found that the activation level of PLAYING in the 
comprehender's WM decreases when the text states that the activity is 
discontinued.
	A time adverbial such as an hour later not only tells the 
comprehender that the upcoming event occurred later than the 
previously simulated event, it also specifies the lapse in time 
between the two events. As such, it informs the reader about a 
discontinuity in the simulation. Given that we do not experience such 
discontinuities in real life, it can be expected that they provide a 
processing problem for the comprehender, and indeed research shows 
they do (Zwaan 1996).

5.5. Compositionality
	The process of integration presupposes that meaning is 
created by combining perceptual symbols in some fashion. For 
instance, the perceptual symbol for zebra can be acquired by 
combining the perceptual symbols for horse and striped even without 
ever actually having seen a zebra. The principle of compositionality, 
according to which the meaning of the whole is a function of the 
meaning of its parts has been a central issue in linguistic and 
philosophical work on the semantics of natural language (e.g., 
Barwise & Etchemendy 1989; Kamp & Partee 1995; see also Estes & 
Glucksberg 2000; Osherson & Smith 1981; Wisniewski 1997 for 
psychological perspectives).
	Consistent with our view, linguistic analyses suggest that 
perceptual representations play a major role in the interpretation of 
particular adjective noun combinations. For instance, the adjective 
round can be used to describe objects of various shapes and 
geometries  (e.g., a ring, a plate, a table, a bubble, a head etc.), 
which at first sight seems to suggest that the meaning of round is 
highly context dependent or in other words that round is a polysemous 
adjective. However, the flexibility of round can be explained without 
using polysemy if perceptual representations are taken into account 
(Lessmoellmann 2000). Specifically, round accesses shape parameters 
that according to Biederman's (1987) recognition-by-components theory 
are encoded in the 3-D model of an object and are computed during 
object recognition. As such, round denotes the shape of the boundary 
of an object's cross section and specifies it as having no vertices. 
Accordingly, the property of being round can be attributed to an 
object by using the adjective round if and only if, the 
representation of the object has a cross-section the boundary of 
which in principle can be round. This explains our ability to use 
round to describe all the different kinds of objects mentioned above. 
This also explains why we, for example, cannot use the expression the 
rope is round to describe a situation in which a rope is laid out on 
the floor so that it forms a circle, or why we cannot combine the 
adjective round with objects that are typically conceptualized as one 
dimensional, as for instance streets or trails.


6.0. Claim 4: Overlapping brain areas

6.1. Neuronal assemblies
	Areas in the left frontal and the left temporal lobes have 
traditionally been viewed as the sites of language processing, as is 
still the case (e.g., Binder et al. 1997). Although the involvement 
of these areas in language processing is undeniable, recent brain 
imaging studies are beginning to show that language processing 
extends far beyond the boundaries of Broca's and Wernicke's areas. 
For example, a recent PET study found that threat words, such as 
destroy and mutilate presented as part of a modified Stroop task, 
activated bilateral amygdalar regions to a greater extent than do 
neutral control words (Isenberg, et al. 1999). The amygdala's role in 
emotional processing is well documented (e.g., LeDoux 1995). In 
addition, activation was found in sensory-evaluative and 
motor-planning areas, areas that are normally activated when the 
organism senses danger. This is all the more noteworthy given that 
the subjects ostensive task was not comprehending words, but naming 
the color of their ink.
	Pulvermueller (1999) proposed a Hebbian model of word 
recognition that accommodates findings such as these. The perception 
of a word activates assemblies of neurons located throughout the 
brain. For example, some action verbs will activate parts of the 
motor cortex, whereas animal nouns will activate parts of the visual 
cortex. In their commentary to the Pulvermueller article, Posner and 
DiGirolamo (1999), while in general agreement with Pulvermueller's 
view, argued that it is too rigid. They argued that which parts of 
the assembly will be activated depends on the semantic and task 
context in which the word is processed. This is consistent with the 
behavioral literature, (e.g., see the tomato example of McKoon & 
Ratcliff 1988 discussed in section 4.3).
	Thus, a context-sensitive version of the assembly model is a 
useful working model from which to develop a brain-based model of 
discourse comprehension. In this model, reading or hearing a word 
activates linguistic (lexical, grammatical, phonological) 
representations as well as associated nonlinguistic information 
(motor representations in the case of action verbs, visual 
representations in the case of object nouns, emotional 
representations in the case of emotion adjectives, and so on). This 
clearly implies that language-based activation is not restricted to 
the language areas of the brain.

6.2. The role of language cues
	Taking Pulvermueller's proposal one step further, we suggest 
that language cues influence the nature of the pattern of activation. 
For example, as discussed earlier, our behavioral experiments (Zwaan 
& Stanfield, submitted) show that "The teacher swept the floor" is 
less likely to activate the concept of "BROOM" than "The teacher 
began sweeping the floor". Extrapolating from these findings, one 
might predict that the simple past tense version is less likely than 
the past progressive to activate visual and motor areas of the brain 
associated with the action of sweeping and its instrument. Thus, not 
only the semantic context, but also the particular form of the 
linguistic expression in which a word occurs might affect the nature 
of the pattern of activation it produces in the brain.

6.3. Neuroimaging of discourse comprehension
	Several recent neuroimaging studies of discourse processing 
show activation of non-language areas during discourse comprehension 
that are consistent with the claim that language comprehension 
engages more than the traditional language areas of the brain. We 
discuss these studies along the lines of our taxonomy of processing 
cues. As there is to date no research on profiling cues, we focus on 
research on construction and integration cues.
	6.3.1. Neuroimaging of construction processes. Mellet et al. 
(1996) conducted a PET study to examine regional cerebral blood flow 
changes as subjects constructed mental images from verbal input. In 
the experimental condition, subjects began with the mental 
visualization of a single cube. The verbal input consisted of 
(French) prepositions (up, down, left, right, front, back) specifying 
the relative positions of subsequent imagined blocks that the 
subjects used to assemble a mental image of a three-dimensional 
object that would ultimately consist of 12 blocks. Thus, this study 
explicitly instructed subjects to use prepositions as cues to 
construct a situation model. Relative to a passive listening 
condition (to nonspatial words) and relative to a resting condition, 
activation was found in regions that make up the dorsal route of 
spatial processing (superior occipital and parietal regions), as has 
been shown to be activated in the spatial processing of external 
visual stimuli (Mishkin, Ungerleider, & Macko 1983). Thus, verbal 
input in the form of spatial prepositions produced, in the context of 
the imagery task, activation in brain areas that subserve visual 
spatial processing. Carpenter, Just, Keller, Eddy, and Thulborn 
(1999), in an event-related fMRI experiment, found that a sentence 
comprehension task activated brain regions known to be activated 
during spatial processing, such as mental rotation (areas in the left 
parietal lobe around the intraparietal sulcus). Carpenter et al. 
presented subjects with sentences such as "The star is (not) above 
the plus" after which the subject pressed a button, which triggered 
the presentation of a visual display (e.g., a picture of a star above 
a plus) to which the subjects responded with a TRUE/FALSE response by 
pressing one of two buttons. The event-related paradigm enabled 
Carpenter et al. to draw some conclusions about the time course of 
activation: the parietal areas were activated while subjects were 
reading the sentences (rather than merely during picture 
verification). In addition, they found activation in the right 
posterior temporal lobe, which they interpreted as evidence that the 
pictorial referents of the sentences were activated.
	Mellet, et al. (2000), in an fMRI study, found that mental 
images of spatial layouts derived from pictures or verbal 
descriptions engaged the same visual mechanisms during an imagery 
task. In both cases there was bilateral activation of superior 
occipito-parietal areas, which might reflect the spatial processing 
required for the task and activation of the right inferior temporal 
gyrus, which is thought to subserve the formation of complex images, 
i.e., construction in our terminology.
	Although these results are interesting, it should be noted 
that the tasks were hardly naturalistic. Thus, the most prudent 
assessment of these results is probably that they show that brain 
areas used in spatial processing and imagery can be engaged during 
language comprehension. However, whether this occurs during 
spontaneous comprehension cannot be determined from these findings.
	6.3.2.  Neuroimaging of integration processes. In order to 
isolate the brain structures that subserve the integration of 
situation models, comparisons have to be made that control for basic 
language processing.  One way to do this is by contrasting conditions 
that do not promote or allow for integration with conditions that do. 
Several recent neuroimaging studies have attempted to use this 
paradigm (Fletcher, et al. 1995; Maguire, Frith, & Morris 1999; 
Robertson, et al. 2000; St. George, Kutas, Martinez, & Sereno 1999). 
A tentative conclusion from these studies is that integration of 
information derived from verbal input involves brain areas 
traditionally not associated with language, e.g., areas in the right 
hemisphere. This conclusion has to be tentative considering that the 
fMRI and PET methodology puts constraints on experimental designs 
that would perhaps not be acceptable in experimental psychology and 
because of the small number of relevant studies. On the upside, the 
conclusion is consistent with various brain lesion studies showing 
that that patients with right-hemisphere damage have comprehension 
problems at the level of discourse, as well as with experiments in 
which hemispheric activation is assessed by presenting verbal stimuli 
to the right or left visual field  (see Beeman 1998 for an extensive 
review).


7.0. Claim 5: What is the role for a record of the verbal input?

7.1 When are records of the verbal input useful?
	If the situation model plays such an essential role in 
comprehension, is there a need to maintain the assumption that the 
brain for some amount of time maintains a record of the verbal input? 
There are arguments why it is. A verbal representation is useful in 
the face of indeterminacy. That is, when the verbal input does not 
sufficiently constrain the range of simulations to be made, 
comprehenders tend to rely on an uninterpreted representation of the 
verbal input until sufficient constraining information has been processed 
(Mani & Johnson-Laird 1982).

7.2. Evidence from brain lesion studies
	Recent brain lesion evidence supports a dissociation between 
memory for verbal input and situational information. Romani and 
Martin (1999) tested a subject, AB, who was operated for a 
left-frontal haematoma, which produced low density regions in the 
postero-lateral left frontal lobe and in the adjacent anterior 
parietal lobe. Whereas AB showed preserved abilities regarding the 
long-term retention of nonverbal visual information, he was impaired 
in the long-term memory of words, behaving at the level of amnesic 
control subjects. Interestingly, despite this handicap, AB exhibited 
a performance in the normal range with respect to comprehension of 
and memory for stories. His memory for individual sentences was below 
the normal range, however. This pattern seems consistent with the 
view that the language areas in the left hemisphere are involved in 
maintaining a record of the verbal input. When these areas are 
damaged, recall of verbal information is greatly impaired. However, 
the fact that the ability to form situation models from verbal input 
(as well as from pictorial input) was preserved, suggests that the 
maintenance of verbal information is not necessary to construct 
situation models (from simple stories at least).
	Verbal reports from spatial-neglect patients also suggest 
that language-like amodal propositions are not used by the brain to 
represent referential meaning. These patients show in their 
descriptions of complex objects or spatial layouts from a specific 
vantage point an impaired representation of the side contralateral to 
the lesion and show impairment of the other side when the perspective 
is reversed  (Barbut & Gazzaniga 1987; Bisiach 1988). Bisiach reports 
about a patient who, when asked to point to the right side of his bed 
responded adequately, but when asked to point to the left side of his 
bed answered after some hesitation: "If this is the right side [the 
external, right surface of the right bed rail], this [the inner, left 
surface of the same bed-rail] must be the left!" (Bisiach 1988, p. 
478). As Bisiach notes (p. 466), the surprising aspect of findings 
such as these is not so much that people use spatial representations, 
but rather that language apparently was unable to fill the gap in the 
spatial representation. This is consistent with the idea that 
language is used to convey referential meaning, but that 
language-like amodal propositions are not used to represent it 
mentally. Referential meaning is critically dependent upon input from 
experiential representations.


8. Conclusions and outlook

8.1. Summary
	We have proposed a view of language comprehension as "guided 
experience," a variation on Neisser's (1967, p. 136) characterization 
of language comprehension as "externally guided thinking." Not only 
is language itself built upon a perceptual foundation, but the 
comprehension processes it engenders are largely the same processes 
that are activated by direct experience. We always experience reality 
from a specific vantage point: our own. Language allows a speaker or 
writer to convey an interpretation of a situation at time X and place 
Y to a hearer or reader at time X' and place Y'. The verbal message 
provides the hearer/reader with a set of cues to perceptually 
reconstruct the sender's interpretation.
	We have adduced evidence from a range of fields that is 
consistent with this view, including cognitive linguistics, cognitive 
psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. In the first section, we made 
five assumptions on which our view of language comprehension as 
guided experience is based:
1. Comprehending language is based on how we experience our environment.
2. Language comprehension involves perceptual symbols.
3. Linguistic expressions are cues to the mind/brain as to how to 
construct situation models.
4. The construction of situation models based on verbal input 
involves the same brain areas that are involved in the construction 
and maintenance of experience-based situation models.
5. The mind/brain may keep an uninterpreted record of the verbal 
input, but this is not critical for comprehension once an 
experiential referential representation has been established.
	The first assumption is supported by considerations about the 
phylogenetic and ontogenetic development of language and by analyses 
of the history of language itself. In addition, it is supported by a 
large number of experiments on situation models. The second claim has 
recently become the topic of empirical studies and has already 
received some direct support, but more is clearly needed. The third 
assumption is supported by many careful linguistic analyses, as well 
as by several language comprehension experiments, which show that 
relatively subtle linguistic differences can greatly affect the 
nature of mental representations. There is also support from 
neuroimaging research. The fourth assumption is beginning to receive 
support from neuroimaging studies have implicating many areas 
hypothesized to be part of the executive suite (sect. 3.2.) in the 
construction and maintenance of language-derived situation models. 
The fifth assumption is supported by brain-lesion studies, as well as 
by text-comprehension experiments. Although the argumentation would 
have to be rather contorted, it could be argued that an amodal 
propositional system could account for many of these findings. For 
example, the fact that brain areas involved in perceptual processing 
are activated during language processing does not in and of itself 
mean that language processing involves perceptual symbols. Without 
any further evidence, it cannot be ruled out a priori that amodal 
propositions are activated in those areas (Zwaan, Stanfield, & Madden 
1999). However, we now have initial empirical evidence that language 
comprehension involves perceptual symbols (sect. 4.1.), although more 
evidence is clearly needed.

8.2. Experience vs. language comprehension
	Throughout this article, we have regarded language 
comprehension as guided experience. The operative word here is 
"guided." We do not want to equate language comprehension with 
experience. There are at least four ways in which language 
comprehension is not identical to experience. First, experiential 
representations constructed from verbal input are less determined by 
the actual input than are representations constructed in direct 
experience. Thus, when constructing experiential representations 
during language comprehension, we are, for instance, more free to 
deliberately abstract or schematize than we are in direct experience. 
As a consequence, language comprehension will often (though perhaps 
not always) produce a lower resolution than direct experience.
	Second, language comprehension often involves the 
construction of an experiential representation of a situation that is 
not the comprehender's physical situation (manuals, tutorials, and 
drug prescriptions are exceptions). Thus, in language comprehension, 
the comprehender actually has to suppress the perceptual input in 
order to form a language-based experiential representation (Glenberg 
1997). More often than not, such suppression is not needed in 
experience. A notable exception is when verbal input has to be 
suppressed when a complex task has to be performed (e.g., driving in 
a large and unfamiliar city).
	Third, language comprehenders are not free to choose a 
perspective or focus on the situation, as we are, to some extent, in 
real life. The perspective and focus are provided to us by the 
speaker/writer. As a consequence of this, language-based experiential 
representations are often less ambiguous or in other words 
interpreted to a stronger degree than are representations constructed 
in direct experience. A fourth difference is that the processes by 
which the representations are constructed are quite different. It is 
conceivable that these differences are in some way reflected in the 
resulting representations. In fact, research on reality monitoring 
has shown that subjects' ability to distinguish between different 
sources from which information was acquired is mainly a factor of 
the operations involved inthe construction of a particular 
representation (e.g., Johnson, Raye, Foley, & Foley 1981).
	Given these restrictions, it does not make sense to equate 
language comprehension with experience. There  often is less detail, 
there is competition from actual perceptual representations, and we 
have less freedom to perceptually explore the situation. It is, thus, 
more appropriate to view language comprehension as guided experience. 
In addition, it may prove beneficial in understanding the nature of 
language-derived representations to further elucidate this 
distinction empirically. Given the many similarities between language 
representations and perceptual event representations presented here, 
future research aimed at revealing the differences may provide a 
better understanding of language comprehension.

8.3. Potential problems for a perceptual view
	8.3.1. What about nonnarrative language? Our focus has been 
on narratives. As mentioned (sect. 1.1.), there are good reasons for 
this. Narratives are the most "natural" discourse genre. Every 
culture has produced them and they constitute the first genre that 
children are exposed to. People spontaneously produce narratives, 
whereas they, whether in grade school or in academia, only produce 
non-narrative texts under some pressure (publish or perish). However, 
if we view language comprehension as guided experience, then this 
view should extend to non-narrative genres. The experience-based view 
lends itself easily for explaining procedural text performance 
(Glenberg & Roberston 1999). Procedural texts are sets of 
instructions to the comprehender to physically carry out actions and 
the referents are actual objects in the comprehender's immediate 
environment: If this doesn't work either, simultaneously hold down 
the Control, Alt, and Delete keys, Please sign on the dotted line, 
Connect Panel A to Panel B using the 3/4" screws.
	However, the matter seems less straightforward for expository 
text. For example, how does one construct an experience-based 
representation of an article such as this? It has been noted very 
often that most expository texts are replete with perceptual 
metaphors. For example, in this article, we talked about the 
construction of mental representations. Thus, one might create an 
experience-based representation of an edifice being built, or, more 
likely in the case of cognitive scientists, of a network to which 
nodes and links are incrementally added. Lakoff and Nunez (1998) show 
how even mathematical concepts such as sets and functions can be 
traced back to everyday bodily experience. Goldstone and Barsalou 
(1998) discuss other relevant evidence supporting the notion of a 
perceptual foundation for abstract concepts. There is also evidence 
that people can represent seemingly abstract relations such as 
ownership in situation models (Radvansky, Wyer, Curiel, & Lutz 1997).
	Nonetheless, the question remains as to whether people 
routinely construct experiential simulations when they read 
expository text. We would argue that this is the case as long as the 
referents are known. Often, when we read an expository text outside 
of our domain of expertise, we might feel as if we are trapped in an 
experiment reading Bransford & Johnson's (1973) "washing clothes" 
passage without the title. In such cases, where no experiential 
simulation can be run, no real understanding takes place (that is, 
there is no indexing, Glenberg & Robertson, 1999). All the 
comprehender comes away with may be some rudimentary simulations and 
a memory record of the verbal input. This is why we often need to 
reread scientific passages. It takes a great deal more effort to 
construct experiential simulations than when we read narratives.
	8.3.2. What happens during shallow processing? Prima facie, 
another potential problem for the experience-based view would be to 
explain what goes on during fast and shallow processing (McKoon & 
Ratcliff 1992), although this type of processing might not constitute 
comprehension per se as it does not necessarily involve an "effort 
after meaning" (Graesser, Singer, & Trabasso 1994) which, as a task 
analysis suggests (Garnham & Oakhill 1996), is the goal of 
comprehension. Nonetheless, it would seem incumbent upon an 
experience-based view to explain what is going on during this type of 
processing. After all, it would be unparsimonious to claim that no 
experience-based representations are activated during shallow 
processing. Fortunately, an experience-based account of shallow 
processing is quite straightforward. Shallow processing is 
characterized chiefly by a lack of integrative processes. However, 
this does not lead to the conclusion that no perceptual symbols are 
being activated and used. What it means is that those perceptual 
symbols are not consistently integrated in simulations. Thus, shallow 
processing poses no problem for our view of language comprehension as 
guided experience. It would not be much different from processing our 
environment in a shallow way (e.g., walking to the library while lost 
in thought).

8.4. Conclusion
	Our proposal has several advantages over theories that view 
comprehension as the construction of networks of amodal propositions. 
First, it is consistent with a range of findings from historical 
linguistics to neuroscience and is able to give a coherent account of 
these disparate findings. Second, it is able to account for findings 
that the amodal propositional view cannot account for, or would not 
have predicted.
	Third, it provides a more natural account of the 
comprehension process than do amodal propositional theories.  If one 
does a task analysis of comprehension--ignoring for the moment that 
one would have to do such an analysis for different text genres and 
different reader goals--it becomes clear that we read or listen to 
discourse because we want to learn something about real or fictional 
events that took place in a different place and/or time--(Garnham & 
Oakhill 1996). As Garnham and Oakhill argue, most psychologists have 
evidently failed to do such a task analysis, or else they would have 
realized that constructing coherent representations of the textual 
input is not normally the goal of comprehension. It is certainly not 
why language ability developed. It would be quite absurd to claim 
that there was selection pressure for language processing if its sole 
purpose was to construct mental representations of the verbal input. 
However, it does make sense to assume that language-based 
experiential simulations developed because there was selective 
pressure to coordinate actions and relate events across time and 
space. It is, thus, also quite natural to view the goal of language 
comprehension to be the vicarious experiencing of events from a 
different time/place.
	For these reasons, we think the notion of language 
comprehension as guided experience will prove to be a useful 
searchlight in the quest to understand the phenomenal human 
accomplishment of language.

Author note.

We thank  Anders Ericsson, Stephanie Kelter, Leo Noordman, Mike 
Rinck, Jos van Berkum, & Jeff Zacks for very helpful comments on an 
earlier draft of this article. However, they are not necessarily 
endorsing all the views espoused here nor are they responsible for 
any errors or omissions.

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Footnotes

1.  Theories of procedural semantics (e.g., Clark & Clark, 1977, 
Miller & Johnson-Laird, 1976) also treat verbal input as cues, namely 
as cues to construct a model and compare it to the outside world to 
obtain a truth value. Though similar in spirit, webelieve our 
proposal is different, specifically with respect to the emphasis it 
places on the experiential aspect of comprehension.


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