Bidirectional Influences of Emotion and Action in Evaluation of Emotionally-Connoted Words

Abstract

The goal of this review is to present the embodied character of emotionally-connoted language through the study of the mutual influences of affective language and motor action. After a brief definition of the embodied approach of cognition, the activity of language understanding is presented as an off-line embodied process implying sensory-motor resonance. Then the bidirectional character of influences between language and action will be addressed in both behavioral and neuropsychological studies, illustrated by the specific case of emotionally-connoted language. These reciprocal effects are grounded on the motor correspondence between action and the motor dimension of language, emerging from a diversity of source such as adaptive motivation, past experiences, body specificities, or motor fluency.