Investigating the association of new verbal labels with novel actions, a behavioral study.

Although for many years language has been considered amodal and separated from other cognitive functions, neuroscientific and neuropsychological studies established evidence of an anatomical and functional link between language and action. Moreover, it seems that actions can also be modulated, among other aspects, by the semantics of language. Indeed, in many studies, an effect of nouns, adverbs, and verbs on reach to grasp movements has emerged. However, this role of language on actions has mostly been studied with existing words, leaving a gap on the role of new labels on the sensorimotor experience. For this reason, our idea is to investigate the role of new labels on actions. In particular, we hypothesize that associating new labels with novel actions can facilitate categorization and motor chunking processes on the action sequence, so that labeled actions are represented in a superordinate chunk and therefore recalled and performed faster. In order to test this hypothesis, we conducted a pilot study in which 10 healthy right-handed and Italian mother-tongue participants were recruited and divided into two groups. Both groups were asked to perform a motor task consisting of alternatively executing two novel actions acquired in the practice phase through some videos. Crucially, during the practice phase, in the experimental group (label group), actions were also associated with new labels, while actions were left unnamed for the control group (no-label group). We measured the amount of time needed in order to start the action and we run a qualitative analysis of the pilot results. On average, participants belonging to the label group start the action before when the action is associated with a new label compared to the no-label group. However, the distribution of the answers shows a peak of faster reaction times in the no label group, even if for fewer participants compared to the label group peak. Finally, results distribution shows that, in some trials, participants belonging to the no-label group started the action even after two seconds, while the same doesn’t happen for the label group, in which actions started in all trials by two seconds. More data, however, will be collected and analyzed before the conference. In addition to the present work, we will also investigate the role of inner speech in learning new actions. Specifically, we want to add a third group in order to explore whether an articulatory suppression task during the presentation of the action videos interferes with the acquisition of the new actions and, consequently, decreases the speed of their execution.