Testing the activation of embodied experience during first and second language comprehension: A sentence-picture verification study

Embodied cognition theory posits that language comprehension is grounded in sensory-motor experiences. However, there is limited evidence regarding whether embodied experiences, such as visual information, are activated during first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) processing. To address this gap, we investigated the activation of object shape information associated with lexical items in sentences among L1 and L2 Chinese speakers. Participants completed two tasks: a timed sentence-picture verification task (Experiment 1) and a self-paced version of the task (Experiment 2). In each trial, participants read a sentence and then judged whether a depicted object was mentioned in the sentence, with the object’s shape either matching or mismatching the sentence context. L1 speakers consistently responded faster in the shape-match condition across both timed and untimed tasks, indicating that visual information is activated during sentence comprehension. In contrast, L2 speakers did not exhibit this pattern, although their reaction times were influenced by their L2 proficiency. These findings suggest that embodied experiences are integral to L1 comprehension, whereas L2 speakers are less likely to simulate embodied information during L2 comprehension, potentially due to limited sensory-motor grounding during L2 acquisition.