Is Moving More Memorable than Proving? Effects of Embodiment and Imagined Enactment on Verb Memory

David M. Sidhu, Penny M. Pexman

Theories of embodied cognition propose that sensorimotor information is simulated during language processing (e.g., Barsalou, 1999). Previous studies have demonstrated that differences in simulation can have implications for word processing; for instance, lexical processing is facilitated for verbs that have relatively more embodied meanings (e.g., Sidhu et al., 2014). Here we examined the effects of these differences on memory for verbs. We observed higher rates of recognition (Experiments 1a-2a) and recall accuracy (Experiments 2b-3b) for verbs with a greater amount of associated bodily information (i.e., an embodiment effect). We also examined how this interacted with the imagined enactment effect: a memory benefit for actions that one imagines performing (e.g., Ditman et al., 2010). We found that these two effects did not interact (Experiment 3b), suggesting that the memory benefits of automatic simulation (i.e., the embodiment effect) and deliberate simulation (i.e., the imagined enactment effect) are distinct. These results provide evidence for the role of simulation in language processing, and its effects on memory.