The neglected role of lexical ambiguity in embodied cognition models

We focus on lexical ambiguity to convene two frameworks – embodied cognition and models of representation of ambiguous words. In the first of the two studies, we collected sensorimotor ratings for separate meanings/senses of ambiguous words and compared homonyms (words with multiple unrelated meanings; e.g. bank) and polysemes (words with multiple related senses; e.g. paper) for the similarity of the obtained profiles on the 12 scales to demonstrate that the linguistic categorization was mirrored in the sensorimotor experience with the referents. We then collected subjective ratings of semantic similarities between pairs of meanings/senses within a word and investigated their relation with the similarity of the sensorimotor profiles to corroborate that the sensorimotor-based similarity was semantic in nature. Our results speak in favour of sensorimotor information as a component of representations of polysemous senses / homonymous meanings, and advise future norming studies to take into account lexical ambiguity.