AUTHOR=Inkster Michelle , Wellsby Michele , Lloyd Ellen , Pexman Penny M. 

TITLE=Development of Embodied Word Meanings: Sensorimotor Effects in Children’s Lexical Processing

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=7

YEAR=2016

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00317

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00317

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=<p>Previous research showed an effect of words’ rated body–object interaction (BOI) in children’s visual word naming performance, but only in children 8 years of age or older (<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="B25">Wellsby and Pexman, 2014a</xref>). In that study, however, BOI was established using adult ratings. Here we collected ratings from a group of parents for children’s BOI experience (child-BOI). We examined effects of words’ child-BOI and also words’ imageability on children’s responses in an auditory word naming task, which is suited to the lexical processing skills of younger children. We tested a group of 54 children aged 6–7 years and a comparison group of 25 adults. Results showed significant effects of both imageability and child-BOI on children’s auditory naming latencies. These results provide evidence that children younger than 8 years of age have richer semantic representations for high imageability and high child-BOI words, consistent with an embodied account of word meaning.</p>