Embodied and situated language processing: Comprehension

This chapter examines how language comprehension is fundamentally grounded in sensorimotor experience, moving beyond traditional computational accounts. Drawing on neural reuse theory and embodied simulation mechanisms, the chapter points out how understanding language involves partially reactivating the perceptual, motor, and affective systems originally engaged during experiences with concepts’ referents. Evidence from neuroimaging, neurostimulation, and behavioral studies reveals systematic activation of somatotopically organized motor regions during action language comprehension, with modality-specific perceptual simulations for visual, auditory, and haptic properties. The chapter explores how embodied processing operates incrementally across spoken and written modalities, with grammatical structures (i.e., aspect and tense) modulating the degree and focus of motor resonance. The gradient nature of embodiment emerges through differential patterns: literal action language elicits robust motor activation, metaphorical extensions produce attenuated but significant effects, and highly conventionalized idioms show minimal sensorimotor involvement. Individual differences in motor expertise and discourse context further shape neural patterns during comprehension. Treating embodied and symbolic aspects as complementary rather than competing dimensions reveals how language remains anchored in sensorimotor experience while supporting abstract thought, compositionality, and stimulus-independence. These findings indicate that embodied simulation constitutes a core mechanism through which linguistic meaning is constructed in real time.