People understand abstract ideas (e.g., positive/negative valence) through concrete concepts (e.g., up/down; Lakoff & Johnson, 2013). Empirical research has shown that upward/downward motor actions stimulate positive/negative feelings and memories (Casasanto & Dijkstra, 2010), and congruent motor actions facilitate word learning (Casasanto & de Bruin, 2019). Although prior studies reveal a close link between language and perceptual experiences, no study has tested whether the visual perception of upward/downward movements enhances the learning of words whose meaning involves either higher/lower spatial position (e.g., cloud, road), positive/negative emotional valence (e.g., joy, grief), or higher/lower social status (e.g., doctor, unemployed). The effects of directional congruency in word learning are discussed based on the results of an experiment in which Japanese speakers learned 54 English-based pseudowords presented with automatic visual movements that were congruent (e.g., upward-positive) or incongruent (e.g., downward-positive) with the pseudowords’ assigned meaning, or controls (e.g., rightward/leftward-positive).

Our perception of how time passes changes dynamically, and is influenced by psychological factors such as sense of agency (SoA), predictability, and attention. Using a reproducing time estimation task, this study investigates how predictability cues can influence time estimation by individuals with stable and unstable SoA. The results show that participants with stable SoA tended to estimate longer durations than participants with unstable SoA. Further, a cue to predictability led to even longer estimations by participants with stable SoA but made no difference in the time estimations of participants with unstable SoA. The study discusses the relationship between individual differences in SoA, predictability, and time estimation.

Is language production isolated from our experiences ofphysical events, or can physical motion affect the conceptualsaliency of the components of a to-be-described event, inways that affect its linguistic description? This studyexamined the influence of physical motion on theinterpretation and description of simple transitive events.More specifically, we investigated whether engagement innon-speech physical actions affects the relative location ofverbs versus arguments in sentence production, and therelative location and prominence of Agents, by testing nativespeakers of Truku, a language that allows flexibility in eachof these options and presents under-studied typologicalpatterns.

This study investigated how knowledge of causality representations affects the reading in Japanese. In Experiment 1, 24 participants read events presented in cause-to-effect or effect-to-cause order without causal conjunctions. The latter received longer reading times and more regressions than the former even when probability and predictability were balanced. Experiment 2 examined whether this reading order effect was derived from a default reasoning asymmetry (i.e., reasoning from cause to effect is favored over that from effect to cause). We utilized epistemic constructions to explicitly identify the reasoning direction. Self-paced reading results from 24 participants showed that readers were more efficient when reading cause-event as the evidence, effect-event as the conclusion vis-a-vis the counterpart, confirming the reasoning asymmetry. However, reading order effect remained robust, presumably reflecting that causal reasoning is temporally embodied.