Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

We describe the verbs pursue, chase, and follow as “tracking” verbs because they share conceptual similarities: they are all motion verbs that describe a dynamic spatial relation between two entities, as in “the cat chased the mouse”. What distinguishes them from one another? If, as some cognitive scientists argue, mental simulations underlie the way the mind processes all motion verbs — including those that describe static scenarios, such as run in “the road runs through the desert” — then those simulations may explain the differences between tracking verbs. For instance, chase and pursue may describe conceptually faster motion than follow. We tested this hypothesis in two experiments. The studies presented participants with imagery of one car chasing another along a straight road. In Experiment 1, participants estimated the distance that the pursued car would travel 3 seconds into the future by dragging a slider to an appropriate point on the road. In Experiment 2, participants estimated the distance by selecting from several distance options on a logarithmic scale. Both studies validated the hypothesis that chase and pursue describe faster motion, i.e., participants reliably estimated longer distances for descriptions that included those verbs. We place the results in the context of broader theories of pursuit perception and verb comprehension.