TY  - JOUR
A1  - Nazir, Tatjana A.
A1  - Hrycyk, Lianna
A1  - Moreau, Quentin
A1  - Frak, Victor
A1  - Cheylus, Anne
A1  - Ott, Laurent
A1  - Lindemann, Oliver
A1  - Fischer, Martin H.
A1  - Paulignan, Yves
A1  - Delevoye-Turrell, Yvonne
T1  - A simple technique to study embodied language processes
BT  - the grip force sensor
JF  - Behavior research methods : a journal of the Psychonomic Society
N2  - Research in cognitive neuroscience has shown that brain structures serving perceptual, emotional, and motor processes are also recruited during the understanding of language when it refers to emotion, perception, and action. However, the exact linguistic and extralinguistic conditions under which such language-induced activity in modality-specific cortex is triggered are not yet well understood. The purpose of this study is to introduce a simple experimental technique that allows for the online measure of language-induced activity in motor structures of the brain. This technique consists in the use of a grip force sensor that captures subtle grip force variations while participants listen to words and sentences. Since grip force reflects activity in motor brain structures, the continuous monitoring of force fluctuations provides a fine-grained estimation of motor activity across time. In other terms, this method allows for both localization of the source of language-induced activity to motor brain structures and high temporal resolution of the recorded data. To facilitate comparison of the data to be collected with this tool, we present two experiments that describe in detail the technical setup, the nature of the recorded data, and the analyses (including justification about the data filtering and artifact rejection) that we applied. We also discuss how the tool could be used in other domains of behavioral research.
KW  - Grip-force sensor
KW  - Embodiment
KW  - Language
KW  - Motor system
Y1  - 2015
U6  - https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-015-0696-7
SN  - 1554-351X
SN  - 1554-3528
VL  - 49
SP  - 61
EP  - 73
PB  - Springer
CY  - New York
ER  -