Your words matter: What you say and how you think
Teltser, S.*, & Kurczek, J. (2013, April). Your words matter. Oral presentation at the Coe College Student Research Symposium, Cedar Rapids, IA.
Recent research has demonstrated that areas of the brain involved in sensory processing are also involved in simulation (Kosslyn, Thompson, Kim & Alpert, 1995).
Speer et al. (2009) found that people reading a story simulated the events while reading
Further, the neural theory of language has also proposed that language comprehension involves simulation (Feldman & Narayanan, 2004).
The link to metaphors is through the theory of perceptual symbols systems (Barsalou, 1999) and conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff, 1992) which state that understanding of concepts requires a reactivation of our previous experiences
We understand more abstract concepts through our experiences/simulations of our actual experiences
We propose that when using metaphors (cognitive devices that allow us to understand one concept in terms of another) we activate primary sensory cortices
