Rapid communication: Readers routinely represent implied object rotation: The role of visual experience

We conducted an eye tracking experiment to investigate whether prior visual experience affects later language processing. We assessed the effects of previously encountered pictures of objects with a vertical or horizontal orientation on the later reading of sentences that implied an object's orientation. First-pass reading times were longer when participants read about an implied orientation that did not match the orientation of the previously seen picture than when the orientation matched. This suggests that a picture encountered 20 min earlier and incidental to the reading task influenced reading. These results have implications for theories of reading comprehension and embodied cognition.

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