Contents

List of figures

List of contributors

Foreword

MARC JEANNEROD

Section I: Language and action: Past, present and future

1.   Embodied cognition, communication and the language faculty

PIERRE JACOB

Section II: The motor origin of language

2.   Toward a Darwinian perspective on language evolution

MICHAEL C. CORBALLIS

3.   From action to speech

MAURIZIO GENTILUCCI AND GIOVANNA CRISTINA CAMPIONE

Section III: Action in language processing

4.   Motor representation and language in space, object and movement perception

YANN COELLO AND CHRISTEL BIDET-ILDEI

5.   Embodied lexical representations: Flexible tools for predicting the future

SHIRLEY-ANN RUESCHEMEYER AND HAROLD BEKKERING

6.   Language comprehension: Action, affordances and goals

ANNA M. BORGHI

7.   Fault-tolerant comprehension

LAWRENCE J. TAYLOR AND ROLF A. ZWAAN

Section IV: Action in language acquisition

8.   Motor skills and written language perception: Contribution of writing knowledge to visual recognition of graphic shapes

JEAN-LUC VELAY AND MARIEKE LONGCAMP

9.   Children’s use of spatial reference frames in verbal and non-verbal tasks

JESSIE BULLENS, NINA LIENENKÄMPER, FRANK WIJNEN AND ALBERT POSTMA

Section V: Action in spatial language and numbers

10.   Functional effects in spatial language

JARED E. MILLER AND LAURA A. CARLSON

11.   On the mapping between spatial language and the vision and action systems

KENNY R. COVENTRY

12.   The spatial mapping of numbers: Its origin and flexibility

MARTIN H. FISCHER

13.   Horizontal spatial representations of number and time: Continuous number and categorical time lines

MASAMI ISHIHARA, YVES ROSSETTI, PETER E. KELLER AND WOLFGANG PRINZ

Section VI: Language and action within the brain

14.   Embodied semantics for language related to actions: A review of fMRI and neuropsychological research

LISA AZIZ-ZADEH

15.   The relationship between gesture and language in brain-damaged patients and individuals with autism

HEIDI STIEGLITZ HAM AND ANGELA BARTOLO

16.   When words trigger activity in the brain’s sensory and motor systems: It is not remembrance of things past

TATJANA A. NAZIR, RAPHAËL FARGIER, PIA ARAVENA AND VÉRONIQUE BOULENGER

Section VII: Language and action in cognitive neuroscience: A final note

17.   Contribution of the action system to language perception and comprehension: Evidence and controversies

YANN COELLO AND ANGELA BARTOLO

Index