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Some insults are more difficult toignore: The embodied insult StroopeffectPaul D. Siakaluk a , Penny M. Pexman b , Holly-Anne R.Dalrymple a , Jodie Stearns a & William J. Owen aa Department of Psychology, University of Northern BritishColumbia, Prince George, BC, Canadab Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB,Canada

Available online: 24 May 2011

To cite this article: Paul D. Siakaluk, Penny M. Pexman, Holly-Anne R. Dalrymple, Jodie Stearns& William J. Owen (2011): Some insults are more difficult to ignore: The embodied insult Stroopeffect, Language and Cognitive Processes, 26:8, 1266-1294

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Some insults are more difficult to ignore: The embodied

insult Stroop effect

Paul D. Siakaluk1, Penny M. Pexman2,Holly-Anne R. Dalrymple1, Jodie Stearns1, andWilliam J. Owen1

1Department of Psychology, University of Northern British Columbia,

Prince George, BC, Canada2Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB,

Canada

The primary purpose of the present research was to examine whether bodily (i.e.,sensorimotor-derived) knowledge influences processing of insults. We presentedmore embodied insults (e.g., asswipe), less embodied insults (e.g., cheapskate),and noninsults (e.g., hardwood) in two Stroop tasks. Results from multipleregression analyses showed that (1) there was an insult Stroop effect, in whichcolour-naming latencies were slower to the insult than to the noninsult stimuli,and (2) bodily experience ratings accounted for a significant amount of uniquecolour-naming latency variability for insults, even with several other predictorvariables (e.g., frequency, offensiveness, imageability) included in the analyses;colour naming was slower for relatively more embodied insults. To determinewhether bodily experience effects generalised to noninsult stimuli, we presentedhigh and low body�object interaction (BOI) words in a third Stroop task. In thisexperiment, BOI did not account for any unique colour-naming latencyvariability. These results suggest that valence is important to these effects, asbodily knowledge slows responding in the Stroop task only for insults.

Keywords: Embodied cognition; Conceptual processing.

Correspondence should be addressed to Paul D. Siakaluk, Department of Psychology,

University of Northern British Columbia, 3333 University Way, Prince George, BC V2N 4Z9,

Canada. E-mail: siakaluk@unbc.ca

This research was supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of

Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grants to P. Siakaluk and P. Pexman. We thank three anonymous

reviewers for their very helpful comments.

LANGUAGE AND COGNITIVE PROCESSES

2011, 26 (8), 1266�1294

# 2011 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business

http://www.psypress.com/lcp http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01690965.2010.521021

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Embodied cognition is the theoretical perspective that much of human

cognition is grounded in bodily knowledge gained through sensorimotor

experience with the world (Anderson, 2003; Barsalou, 1999; Pecher &

Zwaan, 2005; Wilson, 2002). There is increasing evidence, from a variety ofresearch areas, that linguistic conceptual processing is affected by this type of

knowledge. Some examples include the comprehension of: (1) conceptual

metaphors (Gibbs, 2006; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980/2003, 1999); (2) sentences

(Glenberg & Kaschak, 2002; Glenberg et al., 2008; Olivetti Belardinelli et al.,

2009; Richardson, Spivey, Barsalou, & McRae, 2003; Zwaan, Stanfield, &

Yaxley, 2002; Zwaan & Taylor, 2006); and (3) words (Myung, Blumstein, &

Sedivy, 2006, Siakaluk, Pexman, Aguilera, Owen, & Sears, 2008; Siakaluk,

Pexman, Sears, et al., 2008; Tillotson, Siakaluk, & Pexman, 2008; Wellsby,Siakaluk, Owen, & Pexman, in press). Barsalou (1999, 2003) developed an

influential theory called perceptual symbol systems to account for how bodily

knowledge influences conceptual processing.

According to perceptual symbol systems theory, conceptual knowledge is

multimodal, such that bodily knowledge gained through sensory systems (e.g.,

visual, auditory) and motor, kinesthetic, and proprioceptive systems (e.g.,

grasping and manipulating objects, internal feedback from muscles and

joints), is incorporated with knowledge gained through emotional systems(e.g., fear, sadness), and introspective systems (e.g., association, thought). In

other words, conceptual processing is, to a large degree, grounded in neural

systems involved in perception and action. Further, retrieving knowledge

involves simulation or partial reenactment of the neural states implicated at

encoding, such that conceptual knowledge is represented in terms of

simulators. For example, when we have a bodily experience with a bike, the

brain captures states across multiple modalities, such as sensation (e.g., what

the bike looks like) and action (e.g., the bodily ‘‘feel’’ of riding the bike), as wellas emotion (e.g., the fear that may result from nearly getting into an accident),

and introspection (e.g., thoughts about how riding a bike compares to riding a

skateboard), and integrates them into a multimodal neural representation

stored in memory. Later, when knowledge is needed to represent the category

BIKE, these multimodal neural representations are partially reactivated to

simulate how the brain represented the original experience. In other words,

off-line cognition (i.e., cognising about an object or event that is not currently

present) is body-based (Wilson, 2002). When we think about an object orevent, we are neurally re-experiencing the sensory, motor, emotional, and

introspective states associated with that object or event from previous bodily

experience.

Comprehension of insults could be considered another domain of linguistic

conceptual processing. Moreover, insults are concepts with a social purpose:

to offend, degrade, or upset another person (granted, there is much variability

in the degree of offence intended). Interestingly, many insults used in the

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English language are body-based. That is, many insults refer to one or more

body parts (e.g., dink, bonehead), combinations of body parts with other

objects (e.g., pinhead, pea brain) or sensations/perceptions (e.g., numbskull),

body functions (e.g., piece of crap), or other types of knowledge that are gainedthrough bodily experience (e.g., dirty, cripple). An interesting question, from

an embodied cognition perspective, is whether bodily knowledge comprises

part of the conceptual knowledge people access when processing insults.

One possibility is that bodily knowledge is accessible to simulation

processes during the processing of insults. For example, the knowledge of the

feeling one gets when a limb becomes numb and the resulting temporary loss

of full functioning of that limb may be applied to understanding the insult

numbskull, with its implication that someone’s intellectual capacities are notfully functioning. If one were to apply the framework of perceptual symbol

systems theory to processing of insults, an important assumption would be

that when one is called a numbskull, comprehension of the implied meaning

would consist of simulating the bodily states involved during previous

experiences of numbness. Importantly for the purposes of the present

research, bodily knowledge of numbness is likely to be very salient and

would therefore constitute an important component of the simulation. In

contrast, if one were called an idiot, it is not obvious what type of bodilyknowledge would be reliably associated with the insult. Thus, bodily

knowledge would likely not contribute as much to the simulation of idiot.

A second important assumption when applying the framework of

perceptual symbol systems theory to processing of insults is that information

contained in emotional and introspective systems is also highly relevant. It is

likely that simulations for insults like numbskull and insults like idiot partially

consist of knowledge gained from the following types of sources (among

others): (1) emotional states of individuals (including oneself) giving insultsin specific instances and generalised across instances; (2) emotional states of

individuals (including oneself) receiving insults in specific instances and

generalised across instances; and (3) knowledge of contextual and situational

factors for when insults are used in any specific instance and generalised

across instances.

To reiterate, according to the embodied framework outlined above,

comprehension of both numbskull and idiot involves the process of

simulation. We propose that knowledge gained through emotional andintrospective systems is highly salient for simulation of both kinds of insults.

That is, simulating emotional and introspective knowledge is, most likely,

equally important to understanding the intentions behind the insult idiot and

the insult numbskull. However, we further propose that this is not likely to be

the case for knowledge gained through sensory, motor, kinesthetic, and

proprioceptive systems. Thus, although both kinds of insults would have

roughly equal emotional and introspective knowledge components to their

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simulations, we propose that only numbskull would have a large bodily

knowledge component to its simulation.

An alternative possibility is that insults based on bodily knowledge are

idiomatic. That is, bodily knowledge is not accessible to simulation processesduring the processing of insults, much like many conceptual metaphors can

be considered ‘‘dead’’ in the sense that the original reasoning behind their

usage is no longer available to current users (Pinker, 2007, uses the example

of the coming to a head metaphor being dead to current users because they

do not know that it refers to ‘‘the buildup of pus in a pimple’’, p. 238).

The purpose of the present research was to determine whether bodily

knowledge is accessible to simulation processes in native English speakers

when processing insults. We thought a stringent test of this hypothesis couldbe conducted using a variant of the Stroop task (Stroop, 1935). In the

classic Stroop task, participants are shown colour words (e.g., blue) printed in

either congruent (blue) or incongruent (red) ink. Participants are

instructed to name the colour of the ink and ignore the meaning of the

word. Colour-naming latencies for incongruent trials reveal the extent to

which participants have successfully ignored the word meanings. Variants on

this procedure have been used to study the extent to which participants can

ignore emotional information (the emotional Stroop task; e.g., Williams,Mathews, & MacLeod, 1996) or taboo information (the taboo Stroop task;

e.g., MacKay et al., 2004). In the taboo Stroop task, for example, colour-

naming latencies are longer for taboo words (e.g., rape, shit) than for neutral

words (e.g., rust, shop).

Cohen, Dunbar, and McClelland (1990) developed a connectionist model

that, in conjunction with the notion of automatic vigilance (Pratto & John,

1991; see also Wentura, Rothermund, & Bak, 2000), provides a potentially

useful framework for accounting for how semantic characteristics mayinhibit colour-naming processes in the Stroop task. The following are several

important assumptions of the model. First, there are two processing

pathways, one dedicated to processing information relevant to colour-

naming responses (e.g., saying ‘‘red’’ if the font colour of the presented

word stimulus was red), and one dedicated to processing information

relevant to word-reading responses (e.g., saying ‘‘rape’’ if the presented

word stimulus was rape). Second, each pathway consists of three levels of

interconnected units: input units, intermediate units, and output units. Third,there is an additional set of units, called task demand or attention units,

which are connected to the intermediate units of each pathway. It is assumed

that the relevant attention unit becomes active depending on the task to be

performed. That is, the colour-naming attention unit would be activated if

the task was to name aloud the font colour the word stimuli are presented in,

whereas the word-reading attention unit would be activated if the task was to

read aloud the word stimuli. The effect of these attention units is to modulate

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how the information flows through each pathway, such that the information

flow is enhanced in the pathway to which attention is more fully allotted.

Fourth, and importantly, the pathways vary as to the strength of processing

with which information flows through them. The word-reading pathway

develops much stronger connections between its different levels of units than

does the colour-naming pathway, simply because people read much more

often than they name colours.

According to the above framework, inhibition of colour naming in the

standard Stroop task arises in the following way. Task instructions to name

aloud the font colour of the word stimuli activate the colour-naming attention

unit, which increases the efficiency with which information flows in the

colour-naming pathway. However, since word reading is a much more

practiced skill than colour naming, the connections between levels of units

in the word-reading pathway are strong enough to allow for sufficient

efficiency of information flow such that the word-reading pathway may still

interfere with colour naming responding at the output level of the model

(Cohen et al., 1990).

Further, Pratto and John (1991, p. 380) noted that ‘‘(t)here is a fundamental

asymmetry in people’s evaluations of gains and losses, of joy and pain, and

of positive and negative events’’ such that people ‘‘assign relatively more

value, importance, and weight to events that have negative, rather than

positive, implications for them’’. They proposed a cognitive mechanism,

automatic vigilance, that directs attentional resources to negative stimuli in

the environment so that quick evaluations of their significance can be made

and appropriate responses can then be taken. Negative stimuli would readily

capture attentional resources controlled by an automatic vigilance mechan-

ism, and therefore should capture attentional resources and impair colour-

naming performance.

Automatic vigilance for negative stimuli may be incorporated into Cohen

et al.’s (1990) processing framework in the following way. Both attention units

would be activated: the one dedicated to colour naming due to Stroop task

instructions to name aloud the font colour, and the one dedicated to word

reading due to reading being an automatic process. Since the word-reading

pathway has stronger connections between its levels, there would be a resulting

response competition at the output level (i.e., the output from the word-

reading pathway would interfere with the output from the colour-naming

pathway). Importantly, however, the word-reading attention unit would be

more highly activated for negative stimuli than for positive stimuli or for

neutral stimuli due to automatic vigilance. This would result in more enhanced

information flow in the word-reading pathway for negative stimuli than for

other types of stimuli, leading to slower colour-naming latencies for the

negative stimuli.

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The above framework is relevant for the present research, because insults

are negative, socially relevant stimuli whose purpose is to offend, to degrade,

or to upset. As such, insults would readily capture attentional resources

controlled by an automatic vigilance mechanism. The result is that insultsshould capture attentional resources and impair colour-naming performance

more than noninsults.

Given the above framework, our primary research question was whether

relatively more embodied insults would inhibit colour-naming performance

more than relatively less embodied insults. We predicted that they should. Our

proposal is that any source of knowledge (including knowledge gained

through bodily experience) that leads to richer semantic representations for

linguistic stimuli will lead to more efficient word processing. This proposalis supported by three converging lines of evidence. First, Siakaluk and

colleagues have reported that words judged to be high on a dimension they

call ‘‘body-object interaction’’ (BOI, the extent to which one can physically

interact with a word’s referent) are responded to more quickly in lexical

decision and phonological lexical decision tasks (Siakaluk, Pexman, Aguilera,

et al., 2008; Tillotson et al., 2008), and in semantic categorisation tasks

(Siakaluk, Pexman, Sears, et al., 2008; Wellsby et al., in press), than are words

judged to be low on the BOI dimension. Thus, physical or bodily experienceaffords richer lexical-semantic representations. Second are the modelling

results of Plaut and Shallice (1993). They reported that their connectionist

model of word recognition developed stronger attractors in semantic space for

words that initially activated more semantic units, and these stronger

attractors afforded faster settling for these types of words. Third, Pexman,

Hargreaves, Edwards, Henry, and Goodyear (2007) reported a related finding

in a study examining semantic categorisation task response latency and event-

related fMRI data. They observed faster responding and lower levels of neuralactivation in several brain regions associated with semantic processing of

words with relatively rich semantic representations. They proposed that the

decrease in neural activation associated with words with richer semantic

representations could be attributed to more efficient processing for these

words because they have better organised attractors in semantic space (see

also Wheatley, Weisberg, Beauchamp, & Martin, 2005).

For present purposes, we assume that more embodied insults should

activate more semantic units dedicated to the processing of knowledge gainedthrough bodily experience than should less embodied insults (see the above

discussion regarding differences in bodily knowledge between insults like

numbskull and insults like idiot). In terms of the Cohen et al.’s (1990) model,

we propose that bodily knowledge contributes to more efficient processing in

the word-reading pathway, and, as noted, increased efficiency in the word-

reading pathway leads to greater inhibition of colour-naming responses. As a

result, more embodied insults should elicit more efficient processing in the

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word-reading pathway, and correspondingly inhibit colour-naming perfor-

mance to a greater degree, than should less embodied insults. We tested this

possibility in the present Experiments 1 and 2. Previous research has

demonstrated that semantic characteristics interfere with colour-namingperformance for negative stimuli, but not for neutral stimuli (for a review,

see Williams et al., 1996). If the more efficient processing in the word-reading

pathway is only relevant to Stroop task performance when stimuli are negative

(and automatic vigilance is involved), then the inhibition of colour-naming

performance should only extend to insult stimuli and not to neutral

(noninsult) stimuli. We tested this possibility in the present Experiment 3.

In the present research, we investigated whether insults based on bodily

knowledge elicit a stronger Stroop effect than insults not based on bodilyknowledge (while these stimuli were clearly insults they were less offensive

than taboo words). As such, participants were shown: (1) insults in which

bodily knowledge would be important in understanding their meanings (e.g.,

asswipe, dirty, weak), hereafter referred to as more embodied insults; (2) insults

in which this type of knowledge would not be important in understanding

their meanings (e.g., cheapskate, idiot, loser), hereafter referred to as less

embodied insults; and (3) noninsults (e.g., hardwood, natal, speaker). We

collected ratings assessing perceptions of the extent to which bodily experiencewas important to understanding the meanings of our insult stimuli. It is likely

that these ratings captured sensory aspects (e.g., how it looks, smells, or feels

when dirty) and motor aspects (e.g., working in a flowerbed and getting dirty)

of knowledge gained through bodily experience. We regressed the bodily

experience ratings of the insults (as well as several other predictor variables,

see below) on colour-naming latencies. If the bodily experience measure

accounts for unique colour-naming latency variability, then that would

provide support for the idea that bodily knowledge comprises an importantpart of the conceptual knowledge of insults.

EXPERIMENT 1

Method

Participants

Forty-six undergraduate students from the University of Calgary (UC)

participated in Experiment 1 for bonus course credit. All participants were

native English speakers and reported normal or corrected-to-normal vision.

Stimuli

A group of 40 undergraduate students from the University of Northern

British Columbia (UNBC) were provided with sheets of paper and were

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given 15 minutes to write down as many insults as possible. They were told

that the insults could consist of one word or a short phrase. In addition, they

were asked not to write down words or phrases that were excessively rude or

offensive (e.g., ‘‘the f-word’’).

In total, 889 insults were produced from which 178 insults were selected by the

authors. Eighty-eight of these insults (i.e., more embodied insults) were selected

because, based on the authors’ intuitions, knowledge gained through bodily

experience would be important in understanding their meanings (e.g., asswipe,

dirty, weak). The remaining insults (i.e., less embodied insults) were selected

because the authors judged that this type of knowledge would not be important in

understanding their meanings (e.g., cheapskate, idiot, loser). To verify these

intuitions, a separate group of 40 UNBC undergraduate students rated each of

the insults on a 1�7 Likert Scale regarding how important they thought bodily

experience would be to understanding the insult.1 These participants were

given the following instructions to read while the researcher read them aloud:

Please read each insult carefully and decide to what extent the meaning of the

insult references or alludes to knowledge gained through human bodily

experience and interactions. That is, please rate how important you think

having a body contributes to understanding what each insult means.

The participants were then given two examples to help them understand the

task. The researcher explained that the insult bossy would likely be given a

relatively low rating because it is not clear how bodily experience would

contribute much to its meaning, whereas the insult numbskull would likely be

given a relatively high rating because experience with numbness in our bodies

may help contribute to its intended meaning. The bodily experience ratings

confirmed our intuitions; the mean bodily experience ratings of the more

embodied and less embodied insults were 4.58 (SD�1.16) and 2.57 (SD�0.60), respectively (see bottom panel of Table 1). A third group of 40 UNBC

undergraduate students rated each of the insults on 1�7 Likert Scales regarding:

(1) how frequently they thought they heard each item as an insult, and (2) how

offensive they thought each insult was. The order of presentation for the

frequency and offensiveness rating measures was counterbalanced across

participants. Furthermore, three additional groups of UC undergraduate

students rated each of the insults on the following measures: 31 participants

provided imageability ratings (with the instructions from Toglia & Battig, 1978,

which used a 1�7 Likert Scale); 35 participants provided number of meanings

1 Of the original 90 more embodied insults one (numbskull) was inadvertently used as an

example in the instructions for the embodiment ratings and was subsequently removed from the

insult stimulus set. An additional more embodied insult (bonehead) was inadvertently omitted

from the three rating questionnaires. Therefore, the final insult stimulus set used in the Stroop

task consisted of 88 more embodied insults and 90 less embodied insults.

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ratings (with the instructions from Kellas, Ferraro, & Simpson, 1988, which

used a 0�2 categorical scale), and 31 participants provided colour relatedness

ratings on a 1�7 Likert Scale (the instructions were, ‘‘Some words and phrases

evoke colour associations. That is, they are strongly related to certain colours.

Please read each of the following words or phrases carefully and decide how

‘colour related’ each of them is’’). In addition to the above measures, printed

length and printed word frequency (assessed using Hyperspace Analogue to

Language (HAL) log-frequency values from the English Lexicon Project (ELP)

database; Balota et al., 2007) were collected, as was morphological complexity.

The bottom panel of Table 1 lists the mean values for each measure for both the

more embodied and less embodied insults.

In addition, a set of 179 noninsult words and phrases, matched to the

insults on printed length, were selected.2 In order to verify that these words

TABLE 1Mean characteristics of the stimuli; top panel: mean characteristics for the insult andnoninsult stimuli (standard deviations in parentheses) used in Experiments 1 and 2.

Bottom panel: mean characteristics for the more embodied and less embodied insultstimuli (standard deviations in parentheses) used in Experiments 1 and 2

Measure Insults Noninsults

Printed length 6.78 (2.36) 6.80 (2.40)

Morph complexity 1.65 (0.61) 1.70 (0.75)

Colour ratings*** 2.52 (0.91) 3.14 (1.21)

HAL log-frequency*** 6.62 (3.76) 7.84 (2.31)

NoM ratings*** 1.18 (0.17) 1.11 (0.17)

Imageability ratings*** 3.57 (1.08) 4.65 (1.50)

Measure More embodied insults Less embodied insults

Printed length*** 7.49 (2.44) 6.08 (2.07)

Morph complexity*** 1.83 (0.63) 1.48 (0.55)

Colour ratings*** 2.87 (1.07) 2.18 (0.56)

HAL log-frequency 6.89 (3.82) 6.36 (3.71)

Frequency ratings** 2.72 (1.07) 3.26 (0.98)

NoM ratings* 1.20 (0.18) 1.16 (0.17)

Offensiveness ratings 3.04 (0.76) 3.19 (0.90)

Imageability ratings*** 3.89 (1.15) 3.26 (0.90)

Bodily experience ratings*** 4.58 (1.16) 2.57 (0.60)

NOTE: Morph complexity, morphological complexity; HAL, Hyperspace Analogue to

Language; NoM, number of meanings. *pB.10, **pB.01, ***pB.001.

2 The number of noninsult stimuli was intended to match the number of insult stimuli (179

insults; 89 more embodied insults and 90 less embodied insults). In Appendix 1, the extra

noninsult item was bathrobe, which was the control item for the more embodied insult bonehead

(see Footnote 1).

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and phrases were not insults, they were presented to another group of 21

UNBC undergraduate students in an insult decision task. Results showed

that there was strong agreement about the classification of the noninsult

stimuli (only 2.47% errors, or trials on which noninsults were classified asinsults). For insults there was also good agreement, although less than for

noninsults (16.52% errors), likely because some of the insults were relatively

mild and were occasionally judged to be noninsults. Appendix 1 lists the

more embodied insults and their matched (for printed length) noninsults.

Appendix 2 lists the less embodied insults and their matched (for printed

length) noninsults.

Apparatus and procedure

Stimuli were presented in the centre of a 20" monitor controlled by a

desktop computer using E-Prime software (Schneider, Eschmann, & Zucco-

lotto, 2002). Following MacKay et al. (2004), the stimuli were presented in fivecolours (blue, grey, brown, green, and red). Stimuli were presented in 55-point

lowercase Times font on a white background. Each trial began with a fixation

point, presented in the centre of the screen for 1,000 ms. At the offset of the

fixation point the stimulus was presented until a naming response was

initiated. The intertrial interval was 2,000 ms. Participants named the font

colour as quickly and as accurately as possible and were instructed to ignore

the word stimuli. Avoice key in the E-Prime response box measured latency of

naming responses and a digital voice recorder was used to record all namingresponses for subsequent error coding. The presentation order of the stimuli

was randomised for each participant. In this experiment, each stimulus item

was presented in the same colour font across all participants.

Results and discussion

The following procedure for removal of outliers was used for each experiment

in the present study. For each participant, response latencies greater than or

less than 3 SD from the cell mean of each condition were treated as outliers.

For the insult stimuli, a total of 105 observations (1.4% of the data; 52 more

embodied insults and 53 less embodied insults) were removed by this

procedure. For the noninsult stimuli, a total of 104 observations (1.3% of

the data) were removed by this procedure. Trials on which participantsstuttered (e.g., br . . . brown) or failed to trigger the voice key were also

excluded (an additional 5.4% of the data). Response errors (trials on which

participants said the wrong colour or named the stimulus word instead of its

colour) comprised only 1.1% of trials. As such, the response-error data were

not analysed.

Our first analysis addressed whether there was an insult Stroop effect (i.e.,

were colour-naming latencies longer to the insults than to the noninsults?).

THE EMBODIED INSULT STROOP EFFECT 1275

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The mean colour-naming latencies to the insults and the noninsults were 759

ms (SD�64.66) and 727 ms (SD�49.80), respectively. Because the insult

and noninsult stimuli were not matched on several important variables (see

the top panel of Table 1) that are known to influence responding to lexical

stimuli, we followed the recommendation of Larsen, Mercer, and Balota

(2006) and analysed our data using a multiple regression approach.

Specifically, we conducted a hierarchical multiple regression analysis with

colour-naming latency as the criterion variable (this is an item analysis, since

the criterion variable is the mean latency for each item). On the first step we

entered the control variables of printed length, morphological complexity,

HAL log-frequency, and colour relatedness, number of meanings, and

imageability ratings as the predictors, and on the second step we entered

word category (insult or noninsult) as the predictor variable. Zero-order

correlations between the predictor variables and the criterion variable are

shown in Table 2. The multiple regression results are presented in the top

panel of Table 3. Importantly, the word category predictor variable

accounted for a significant amount of unique colour-naming latency

variability above and beyond that of the control variables (sr��.27,

^R2�.072), such that longer response latencies were associated with the

insults.3 In summary, an insult Stroop effect was present in our data.Our second analysis addressed whether bodily experience uniquely

predicted colour-naming latency variability for the insult stimuli. The

mean colour-naming latencies to the more embodied insults and the less

embodied insults were 775 ms (SD�64.79) and 743 ms (SD�60.74),

respectively. We conducted a hierarchical multiple regression analysis with

colour-naming latency as the criterion variable. The predictor variables of

printed length, morphological complexity, HAL log-frequency, and colour

relatedness, frequency, number of meanings, offensiveness, and imageability

ratings were entered on the first step, and bodily experience ratings was the

predictor entered on the second step. (We used the bodily experience ratings,

rather than a categorical variable of more embodied insult or less embodied

insult, in the present analysis, because they allowed for a more fine-grained

assessment of the relationship between bodily experience and colour-naming

latency.) Zero-order correlations between the predictor variables and the

criterion variable are shown in Table 4. The multiple regression results are

presented in the top panel of Table 5. Bodily experience ratings did indeed

account for a significant amount of variability in colour-naming latencies

above and beyond that accounted for by the other predictor variables (sr�.26, ^R2�.069). Further, the positive semipartial correlation between

3 The insult stimuli were coded as ‘‘1’’ and the noninsult stimuli as ‘‘2’’ in our multiple

regression analysis. Thus, the negative semipartial correlations for the word category predictor

variable in Table 3 indicate that longer latencies were associated with the insult stimuli.

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TABLE 2Zero-order correlations between the predictor variables and colour-naming latencies for the insult and noninsult stimuli in

Experiments 1 and 2

Measure 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

1. Printed length �2. Morph complexity .78** �3. Colour ratings .04 �.04 �4. HAL log-frequency .09 .04 .14* �5. NoM ratings �.08 �.07 .16** .34** �6. Imageability ratings �.05 �.08 .69** .17** .21** �7. Word category .01 .04 .28** .19** �.19** .38** �8. Experiment 1 latency .30** .21** �.02 �.11* �.05 �.07 �.27** �9. Experiment 2 latency .43** .38** .08 �.09 .00 .00 �.28** .47** �

NOTE: Morph complexity, morphological complexity score; HAL, Hyperspace Analogue to Language; NoM, number of meanings.

*pB.05, **pB.01.

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bodily experience ratings and colour-naming latency indicated that the

bodily experience ratings had an inhibitory effect such that increasing levels

of bodily knowledge (as measured by our bodily experience ratings) were

associated with slower colour-naming performance.

As noted, the main purpose of Experiment 1 was to examine whether

bodily knowledge influences processing of insults. More specifically, we

examined the interesting question, from an embodied cognition perspective,

of whether bodily knowledge comprises part of the conceptual knowledge

people access when processing insults, and two possible outcomes were

proposed. If bodily knowledge for insult stimuli is accessible to simulation

processes during Stroop task processing, and if our bodily experience ratings

capture this type of knowledge, then the bodily experience ratings should

account for a significant amount of unique variability in colour-naming

latencies for insults. Conversely, if bodily knowledge is not accessible to

simulation processes, because insults are idiomatic, then the bodily experience

TABLE 3Results of the insult Stroop effect hierarchical multiple regression analyses for

Experiments 1 and 2

Variable B SEB b sr R2 DR2

Experiment 1

Step 1 .111*** .111***

Step 2 .183*** .072***

Printed length 8.04 2.00 .32 .20***

Morph complexity �1.66 6.88 �.02 �.01

Colour ratings 1.14 3.64 .02 .02

HAL log-frequency �1.14 1.02 �.06 �.05

NoM ratings �30.99 19.33 �.09 �.08

Imageability ratings 3.61 3.04 .09 .06

Word category �37.81 6.83 �.32 �.27***

Experiment 2

Step 1 .218*** .218***

Step 2 .312*** .094***

Printed length 5.17 1.18 .32 .19***

Morph complexity 8.70 4.07 .15 .10**

Colour ratings 3.81 2.15 .11 .08*

HAL log-frequency �0.81 0.60 �.07 �.06

NoM ratings �12.66 11.43 �.06 �.05

Imageability ratings 3.26 1.80 .12 .08*

Word category �27.94 4.04 �.36 �.31***

NOTE: Morph complexity, morphological complexity score; HAL, Hyperspace Analogue to

Language; NoM, number of meanings. The B, SEB, b, and sr values are for the final step in the

analysis, where all the predictor variables were included in the equation.

*pB.08, **pB.05, ***pB.01.

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TABLE 4Zero-order correlations between the predictor variables and colour-naming latencies for the more embodied and less embodied insult

stimuli in Experiments 1 and 2

Measure 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

1. Printed length �2. Morph complexity .74** �3. Colour ratings .10 .07 �4. HAL log-frequency .07 �.03 �5. Frequency ratings �.40** �.33** �6. NoM ratings �.16* �.14 �7. Offensiveness ratings .10 .09 �.18* .07 .38** .12 �8. Imageability ratings �.08 �.09 .64** .06 .05 .45** �.11 �9. Bodily experience ratings .32** .31** .26** .05 �.26** .01 .00 .28** �

10. Experiment 1 latency .35** .27** .03 �.08 �.15* �.12 .04 �.01 .36** �11. Experiment 2 latency .41** .39** .19* �.11 �.15* �.07 .01 .18* .47** .55** �

NOTE: Morph complexity, morphological complexity score; HAL, Hyperspace Analogue to Language; NoM, number of meanings.

*pB.05, **pB.01.

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ratings should not account for a significant amount of unique variability in

colour-naming latencies for insults. The present results were consistent with

the former outcome; colour-naming latencies were longer when insults were

relatively more embodied. This result provides support for the suggestion we

derived from the embodied cognition framework, that bodily knowledge is an

integral aspect of what is accessible to simulation processes when people

process insults.

However, there may have been a potentially important confound in the

way the stimuli were presented in Experiment 1. Each stimulus item was

presented in the same colour font for each of the participants. It is therefore

necessary to check whether stimulus item assignment to colours was an issue

for our stimulus set, because some of our embodied insults were related to

TABLE 5Results of the embodied insult Stroop effect hierarchical multiple regression analyses

for Experiments 1 and 2

Variable B SEB b sr R2 DR2

Experiment 1

Step 1 .139*** .139***

Step 2 .208*** .069***

Printed length 8.29 2.98 .30 .19***

Morph complexity �3.52 10.89 �.03 �.02

Colour ratings �2.60 6.84 �.04 �.03

HAL log-frequency �1.80 1.31 �.11 �.10

Frequency ratings 3.18 5.42 .05 .04

NoM ratings �11.17 33.77 �.03 �.02

Offensiveness ratings �0.60 6.20 �.01 �.01

Imageability ratings �0.71 5.93 �.01 �.01

Bodily experience ratings 14.34 3.74 .30 .26***

Experiment 2

Step 1 .262*** .262***

Step 2 .347*** .085***

Printed length 4.39 1.71 .25 .16**

Morph complexity 9.49 6.25 .14 .10

Colour ratings 1.68 3.93 .04 .03

HAL log-frequency �1.39 0.75 �.13 �.12*

Frequency ratings 4.79 3.12 .12 .10

NoM ratings �16.45 19.40 �.07 �.05

Offensiveness ratings �1.79 3.56 �.04 �.03

Imageability ratings 4.94 3.41 .13 .09

Bodily experience ratings 10.04 2.15 .34 .29***

NOTE: Morph complexity, morphological complexity score; HAL, Hyperspace Analogue to

Language; NoM, number of meanings. The B, SEB, b, and sr values are for the final step in the

analysis, where all the predictor variables were included in the equation.

*pB.07, **pB.05, ***pB.01.

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concepts, such as feces or dirt, that are associated with the colour brown

(e.g., asswipe, dirty, piece of crap). Previous research has demonstrated that

colour-naming performance is slower for words that are associated with a

colour (e.g., lake) relative to words that are not associated with a colour (e.g.,luck; Dalrymple-Alford, 1972; Klein, 1964; Scheibe, Shaver, & Carrier, 1967).

Thus, there is the possibility that stimulus item�colour assignment pairings

were a confound in Experiment 14 (although it should be noted that the

colour relatedness ratings were not significantly related to colour-naming

latencies). In Experiment 2, we used five different versions of stimulus item�colour font pairings to examine this issue.

EXPERIMENT 2

Method

Participants

Forty-six UC undergraduate students participated in Experiment 2 forbonus course credit (none of them participated in any of the other

experiments). All participants were native English speakers, and reported

normal or corrected-to-normal vision.

Stimuli

The stimuli were those used in Experiment 1.

Apparatus and procedure

The apparatus and procedure were identical to those used in Experiment 1

except that in Experiment 2 there were five different versions of stimulus

item�colour font pairings. Versions 1, 2, 3, and 5 were presented to nine

participants each, and Version 4 was presented to 10 participants.

Results and discussion

For the insult stimuli, a total of 95 observations (1.2% of the data; 49 more

embodied insults and 46 less embodied insults) were considered outliers and

removed from the analyses. For the noninsult stimuli, a total of 99

observations (1.3% of the data) were considered outliers and removedfrom the analyses. Trials on which participants stuttered or failed to trigger

the voice key were also excluded (an additional 3.2% of the data). Response

errors (trials on which participants said the wrong colour or named the

4 We thank an anonymous reviewer for alerting us to this potential confound and the

relevant literature.

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stimulus word instead of its colour) comprised only 1.7% of trials; hence the

response-error data were not analysed.

We examined whether there was an insult Stroop effect (i.e., were colour-

naming latencies longer to the insults than to the noninsults?) in the presentexperiment. The mean colour-naming latencies to the insults and the

noninsults were 749 ms (SD�40.89) and 727 ms (SD�32.85), respectively.

A hierarchical multiple regression analysis was conducted on colour-naming

latency with the same predictor variables used in Experiment 1. Again, the

control variables were the predictors entered on the first step, and word

category was the predictor entered on the second step. Zero-order correlations

between the predictor variables and the criterion variable are shown in Table

2. The multiple regression results are presented in the bottom panel of Table 3.As was the case in Experiment 1, the word category predictor variable

accounted for a significant amount of unique colour-naming latency

variability above and beyond that of the control variables (sr��.31,

DR2�.094), such that longer response latencies were associated with the

insults. The insult Stroop effect was replicated in the present experiment.

To determine whether bodily experience uniquely predicted colour-naming

latency variability for the insult stimuli, we conducted a hierarchical multiple

regression analysis with colour-naming latency as the criterion variable andwith the same predictor variables used in Experiment 1. Again, the control

variables were the predictors entered on the first step, and bodily experience

ratings was the predictor entered on the second step. The mean colour-naming

latencies to the more embodied insults and the less embodied insults were 763

ms (SD�42.41) and 734 ms (SD�33.85), respectively. Zero-order correla-

tions between the predictor variables and the criterion variable are shown in

Table 4. The multiple regression results are presented in the bottom panel of

Table 5. Replicating the findings from Experiment 1, the analysis demon-strated that bodily experience ratings accounted for a significant amount of

variability in colour-naming latencies above and beyond that accounted for by

the other predictor variables (sr�.29, DR2�.085). The positive semipartial

correlation between bodily experience ratings and colour-naming latency was

again observed, indicating that increasing levels of bodily knowledge were

associated with slower colour-naming performance.

The results from Experiment 2 make clear that the effects of bodily

experience observed in Experiment 1 were not dependent on the particularstimulus item�colour assignment pairings used in that experiment. Although

there was a significant (but small) correlation between colour relatedness

ratings and colour-naming latency in Experiment 2, colour relatedness ratings

did not account for a significant amount of unique variability. Taken together,

the results from Experiments 1 and 2 support the idea that bodily knowledge is

an integral aspect of what is accessible to simulation processes when people

process insults in the Stroop task.

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The present results further suggest that knowledge gained through bodily

experience is a semantic characteristic that can inhibit colour naming in the

Stroop task. What has not yet been determined in the present research is

whether this finding is restricted to stimuli that are associated with emotional

valence (in this case negativity in a social context), such as insults, or whether

knowledge gained through bodily experience also influences colour-naming

processes with stimuli that are either emotionally positive, such as compliments,

or are emotionally neutral.

In order to address this unanswered question, we first considered whether

we could develop a set of more embodied and less embodied compliments.

This proved to be a difficult task, because there is actually a very limited

number of more embodied compliments (e.g., handy, gutsy). A second option,

and the one we chose, was to develop a set of more embodied and less

embodied neutral stimuli. In quantifying bodily experience for neutral stimuli,

it did not make sense to us to use instructions similar to those used for the

insult stimuli in Experiments 1 and 2. That is, it seemed to us to make little

sense to ask people to rate neutral stimuli (e.g., book) by deciding ‘‘to what

extent the meaning of the word references or alludes to knowledge gained

through bodily experience and interactions’’ or by deciding ‘‘how important

you think having a body contributes to understanding what each word

means’’.

In Experiment 3, we conducted a third Stroop task in which participants

were shown neutral stimuli that varied on the dimension of BOI. We chose this

dimension for several reasons. First, as mentioned, BOI assesses perceptions

of the ease with which a human body can physically interact with a word’s

referent (Siakaluk, Pexman, Aguilera, et al., 2008). Thus, we propose that BOI

measures motor experience people have had with a word’s referent, and that

this knowledge is contained in brain systems dedicated to motor processing

(Barsalou, 1999, 2003) and is constitutive of lexical-semantic knowledge

(Siakaluk, Pexman, Aguilera, et al., 2008). We appreciate and acknowledge

that the bodily experience ratings used in the present study and the BOI

dimension are not conceptually identical. However, they both gauge aspects of

sensorimotor or bodily experience, and can be considered ‘‘sensorimotor’’

variables tapping into bodily knowledge. Second, as noted, BOI has been

reported to influence performance in various word-processing tasks, such as

lexical decision and phonological lexical decision tasks (Siakaluk, Pexman,

Aguilera, et al., 2008; Tillotson et al., 2008) and semantic categorisation tasks

(Siakaluk, Pexman, Sears, et al., 2008; Wellsby et al., in press). Third, we had

previously collected BOI ratings for a large number of words (Tillotson et al.,

2008) and readily had access to them. Although not a perfect conceptual

match with bodily experience ratings, we thought that BOI would be an

appropriate measure to examine the question of whether knowledge gained

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through bodily experience would influence colour-naming performance in the

Stroop task for stimuli that are valence neutral.

EXPERIMENT 3

Method

Participants

Forty UC undergraduate students participated in Experiment 3 for bonus

course credit (none of them participated in any of the other experiments). All

participants were native English speakers, and reported normal or corrected-

to-normal vision.

Stimuli

The stimuli consisted of 100 high BOI words and 100 low BOI words

selected from Tillotson et al. (2008). All items were monosyllabic. The two

sets of items were selected to be as high or low on the BOI measure as

possible. In addition to BOI ratings, printed HAL log-frequency, ortho-

graphic and phonological neighbourhood size (all calculated using the ELP

database), and printed length were also collected.5 Table 6 lists the mean

values for each measure for both sets of items. Appendix 3 lists the high BOI

words and the low BOI words.

Apparatus and procedure

The apparatus and procedure were identical to those used in Experiment 1.

Results and discussion

A total of 107 observations (1.3% of the data; 54 high BOI words and 53 low

BOI words) were considered outliers and removed from the analysis. Trials

on which participants stuttered or failed to trigger the voice key were also

excluded (an additional 5.2% of the data). Response errors (trials on which

participants said the wrong colour or named the stimulus word instead of its

colour) comprised only 0.6% of trials, and therefore the response-error data

were not analysed. The mean colour-naming latencies to the high BOI words

5 We also collected imageability ratings from Cortese and Fugett (2004). The zero-order

correlation between the imageability ratings and the BOI ratings was .94, thus we did not include

the imageability ratings in the hierarchical multiple regression analysis for Experiment 3. We

instead conducted a separate analysis using the imageability ratings (in place of the BOI ratings)

at Step 2, and observed the same pattern of effects, the most important of which was that no

unique colour-naming latency variability was accounted for by the imageability ratings.

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and the low BOI words were 677 ms (SD�34.68) and 676 ms (SD�37.67),

respectively.

The primary research question for Experiment 3 was whether the BOI

ratings uniquely predicted colour-naming latency variability, given that all of

the stimuli were noninsults (i.e., neutral words). To address this question, we

conducted a hierarchical multiple regression analysis with colour-naming

latency as the criterion variable. The control variables of printed length,

HAL log-frequency, orthographic neighbourhood size, and phonological

neighbourhood size were the predictors entered on the first step, and BOI

ratings were the predictors entered on the second step. Zero-order correla-

tions between the predictor variables and the criterion variable are shown in

Table 7. The multiple regression results are presented in the top panel of

Table 8. Interestingly, BOI ratings did not account for a significant amount

of colour-naming latency variability above and beyond that accounted for by

the other predictor variables (sr�.03, DR2�.001), thus supporting the

prediction above.

Since a null BOI effect was observed in the Stroop task, we conducted an

additional analysis in order to ensure that the stimuli we selected would

produce the ‘‘typical’’ BOI effect in the lexical decision task (LDT; Tillotson

et al., 2008); we conducted another hierarchical multiple regression analysis

in which LDT latencies for the present sets of high and low BOI items were

taken from the ELP database (Balota et al., 2007) and were used as the

criterion variable. The mean ELP LDT latencies to the high BOI words and

the low BOI words were 615 ms (SD�45.83) and 654 ms (SD�71.93),

respectively. The multiple regression results are presented in the bottom panel

of Table 8. Importantly, the BOI ratings accounted for a significant amount of

unique LDT latency above and beyond that accounted for by the other

predictor variables (sr��.21, ^R2�.045).

TABLE 6Mean characteristics for the high BOI and low BOI stimuli (standard deviations in

parentheses) used in Experiment 3

Measure High BOI items Low BOI items

Printed length 4.34 (0.81) 4.46 (0.78)

HAL log-frequency 9.05 (1.33) 8.77 (2.02)

ON* 9.81 (6.24) 7.21 (5.78)

PN* 22.82 (14.28) 17.25 (11.56)

BOI ratings** 5.70 (0.45) 1.61 (0.19)

NOTE: BOI, body�object interaction; HAL, Hyperspace Analogue to Language; ON,

orthographic neighbourhood size; PN, phonological neighbourhood size.

*pB.01, **pB.001.

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The results of Experiment 3 are in stark contrast to the results observed in

Experiments 1 and 2, in which bodily experience ratings captured unique

significant colour-naming latency variability when the experimental items

were insults. Taken together, the results from the present study tentatively

support the idea that valence is an important determinant as to whether

accessing bodily knowledge slows responding in the Stroop task.

However, some caution is in order. First, as noted, although both the bodily

experience and BOI variables gauge aspects of sensorimotor experience and

tap into sensorimotor knowledge, they are not conceptually identical. It may

be that the type of sensorimotor knowledge that the bodily experience ratings

tap into may slow responding in the Stroop task regardless of valence. As we

stated above, this is a difficult hypothesis to rule out for two reasons: (1)

there are very few embodied compliments to test the hypothesis, and (2) the

instructions we used for the bodily experience ratings (involving allusion and

not just reference) do not make sense for literal, emotionally neutral stimuli.

Second, the average length of the stimuli used in Experiments 1 and 2 was 6.8

letters (and many of the stimuli consisted of more than one word), whereas the

average length of the stimuli used in Experiment 3 was 4.4 letters. This

difference in average length was also very difficult to avoid (since we had access

to only monosyllabic stimuli with BOI ratings) and may have somehow

affected processing in the insult and BOI Stroop tasks.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

The primary purpose of Experiments 1 and 2 was to determine whether

knowledge gained through bodily experience influenced the processing of

insults. We examined this issue using a variant of the Stroop task and two

TABLE 7Zero-order correlations between the predictor variables and colour-naming latencies

and lexical decision latencies for Experiment 3

Measure 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1. Printed length �2. HAL log-frequency �.17** �3. ON �.71*** .27*** �4. PN �.50*** .37*** .67*** �5. BOI ratings �.07 .09 .22*** .23*** �6. Experiment 3 latency �.20*** �.18** .12* .04 .03 �7. LDT latency .13 �.64*** �.26*** �.39*** �.31*** .09 �

NOTE: HAL, Hyperspace Analogue to Language; ON, orthographic neighbourhood size; PN,

phonological neighbourhood size; BOI, body�object interaction.

*pB.09, **pB.05, ***pB.01.

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TABLE 8Results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses for Experiment 3 and for the LDT latencies from the English Language Project

database

Variable B SEB b sr R2 DR2

Experiment 3

Step 1 .086** .086**

Step 2 .087** .001

Printed length �10.26 4.48 �.23 �.16*

HAL log-frequency �4.62 1.56 �.22 �.20**

ON 0.14 0.68 .02 .01

PN �0.05 0.26 �.02 �.01

BOI ratings 0.59 1.24 .03 .03

LDT latencies taken from the English Language Project database

Step 1 .437*** .437***

Step 2 .483*** .045***

Printed length �5.75 5.91 �.07 �.05

HAL log-frequency �21.06 2.06 �.57 �.53***

ON �0.10 0.90 �.01 �.01

PN �0.74 0.35 �.16 �.11*

BOI ratings �6.76 1.64 �.22 �.21***

NOTE: HAL, Hyperspace Analogue to Language; ON, orthographic neighbourhood size; PN, phonological neighbourhood size; BOI, body�object

interaction. The B, SEB, b, and sr values are for the final step in the analysis, where all the predictor variables were included in the equation.

*pB.05, **pB.01, ***pB.001.

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possible outcomes were proposed. First, if bodily knowledge for insults

was accessed during Stroop task processing, and if our bodily experience

ratings captured aspects of this type of knowledge, then the bodily experience

ratings should have accounted for a significant amount of unique variabilityin colour-naming latencies for insults. Second, if bodily knowledge was

inaccessible, because insults are lexicalised or idiomatic, then our bodily

experience ratings should not have accounted for a significant amount of

unique variability in colour-naming latencies for insults. The results from

Experiments 1 and 2 were consistent with the former outcome; colour-naming

latencies were longer when insults were relatively more embodied, even with

the effects of numerous other predictor variables statistically controlled. These

results provide support for the idea we derived from the embodied cognitionframework, that bodily knowledge is an integral aspect of the conceptual

knowledge people have about insults.

We would like to re-emphasise an important point made in the Introduc-

tion. We proposed that it is highly probable that knowledge gained through

emotional and introspective systems is equally constitutive of simulations for

both more embodied and less embodied insults. We further proposed that

knowledge gained through sensory, motor, kinesthetic, and proprioceptive

systems is more constitutive of simulations for more embodied insults than forless embodied insults. Thus, we conclude that it is knowledge gained through

bodily experience that provides for richer simulations for the more embodied

insults than for the less embodied insults, and hence leads to slower colour-

naming response latencies for the former type of stimuli.

We next wanted to determine if knowledge gained through bodily

experience influenced colour-naming performance with stimuli that were

emotionally neutral. To do so, we conducted a third Stroop task in which we

presented neutral stimuli varying in BOI, a sensorimotor knowledge dimen-sion reported to influence performance in a variety of word-recognition tasks.

As noted, previous research (for a review, see Williams et al., 1996) has

demonstrated that semantic characteristics do not reliably interfere with

colour-naming performance for neutral stimuli, and we therefore predicted a

null BOI effect in the Stroop task. The results from Experiment 3 were

consistent with this prediction, as BOI did not account for any unique colour-

naming latency variability beyond that accounted for by the other predictor

variables. Keeping in mind the cautions outlined above in the Discussionsection of Experiment 3, the results from the present study suggest that

valence is important in order for bodily knowledge to elicit inhibitory effects

on colour-naming performance.

Given the results of the present study, an intriguing question is how

knowledge gained through bodily experience acts to delay colour-naming

performance for insults. In the Introduction, we outlined a framework based

on Cohen et al.’s (1990) connectionist model of Stroop task performance

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that, in conjunction with the notion of automatic vigilance (Pratto & John,

1991; Wentura et al., 2000), and the idea that bodily knowledge influences

linguistic processing (e.g., Siakaluk, Pexman, Sears, et al., 2008) provides a

possible explanation of how bodily knowledge inhibits colour-naming

performance for insults. We further proposed that any source of knowledge

(including knowledge gained through bodily experience) that leads to richer

semantic representations for linguistic stimuli will lead to more efficient word

processing (e.g., Siakaluk, Pexman, Aguilera, et al., 2008; Siakaluk, Pexman,

Sears, et al., 2008). In terms of the Cohen et al.’s (1990) framework, bodily

knowledge would contribute to more efficient processing in the word-reading

pathway, and the increased efficiency in the word-reading pathway would

lead to greater inhibition of colour-naming responses.

The last issue to consider is why bodily knowledge inhibits colour naming

for insults but not for neutral stimuli that vary along a bodily knowledge

dimension, as measured, in the present research, by the BOI variable. We

outlined in the Introduction that the importance of the notion of automatic

vigilance as a cognitive mechanism to account for why bodily knowledge

inhibits colour naming for insults but not for neutral stimuli. We proposed

that because insults are negative, socially relevant stimuli, they would readily

capture attentional resources controlled by an automatic vigilance mechan-

ism. As such, insults, more so than noninsults, should capture attentional

resources and impair colour-naming performance. Both the insult Stroop

effect observed in Experiments 1 and 2 and the null BOI effect observed in

Experiment 3 support this prediction.

The results from Experiment 3 are also consistent with the notion that

automatic vigilance is an important contributor of whether knowledge

gained through bodily experience slows performance in the Stroop task. If

automatic vigilance is not an important factor, then one could make the

hypothesis that high BOI words should slow Stroop task responding more so

than low BOI words, because they elicit richer sensorimotor simulations that

would more greatly interfere with colour naming. However, an alternative

hypothesis is that in order for richer sensorimotor simulations to interfere

with colour naming, the stimuli associated with those richer sensorimotor

simulations would first need to capture attentional resources controlled by an

automatic vigilance mechanism. Since the high BOI and low BOI stimuli

used in Experiment 3 were emotionally neutral, and thus neither type of

word would be more likely to capture attentional resources controlled by an

automatic vigilance mechanism, the prediction would be that high BOI

words, despite their eliciting richer sensorimotor simulations than the low

BOI words, should not impair colour naming to a greater degree. This is

what was observed.

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CONCLUSION

In the present research, we report a novel and important finding, the

embodied insult Stroop effect: colour naming for relatively more embodied

insults is delayed compared to colour naming for relatively less embodied

insults. We propose that, generally, bodily knowledge is an important aspect

of conceptual knowledge and, more specifically, we have extended this

general proposition by showing inhibitory embodiment effects for processing

of insults in the Stroop task.

Manuscript received 20 March 2009

Revised manuscript received 31 August 2010

First published online May 2011

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APPENDIX 1More embodied insults and their respective control items used in Experiments 1 and 2

More embodied Control More embodied Control

airhead ashtray lazy lamp

asshole armband loud mouth clock work

asswipe airbase lunkhead lambskin

backstabber blockbuster meat head book mark

block head wind chime minute man easy chair

blonde barley muscle head garden hose

brain dead phone call neanderthal normalising

brainiac bacteria nosy nanny

brown noser simple life not athletic yellow pages

butt head plant pot numb nuts lamp post

chicken cartoon overly aggressive eagerly awaiting

chubby chaste pea brain high five

couch potato party favour penis breath poster board

cripple crimson pig paw

crybaby capsize pinhead pullout

dead beat arm chair pizza face once again

dick head day dream potty mouth gas station

dimwit detour prick polka

dink disc prune face tree stump

dirtbag daytime puck pony

dirty daisy pushover postmark

disgusting discomfort rat rib

doorknob doughnut red neck best man

douchebag dashboard sack of crap wash and dry

drunk dairy scrawny sparrow

dull duty scumbag sandbox

dumbass denture short scuff

egg head fur coat shrimpy speaker

fairy fever slow salt

fat fun spineless shadowbox

frigid fender stink shack

glutton gallant stoner splash

golddigger groundwork thick skull heart throb

greaseball greenhouse too skinny cowboy hat

gross grade tool town

hairy ape apple pie toothpick teakettle

helpless hardwood ugly undo

herpe face maple leaf unattractive unrestrained

ice queen take care wanker whiskey

jackass jawbone waste of skin black and white

jerk off ball cap waste of space truth or dare

lame lock weak wife

lardass lawsuit weakling wondrous

large least white trash sweat shirt

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APPENDIX 2Less embodied insults and their respective control items used in Experiments 1 and 2

Less embodied Control Less embodied Control

abuser aboard jailbait jeopardy

awkward abstain jerk java

bastard bandage keener kidney

bitch bench liar lure

boring bubble loner ladle

brat bind loser layer

bugger burlap lunatic lottery

burger flipper vacuum cleaner lurk leel

chauvinistic chloroform mean moss

cheapskate chandelier moron mocha

cheater climate naı̈ve natal

chump chop nasty nerve

clown chirp needy niece

conceited cognition nerd node

copy cat handle bar noob nook

cougar cotton nut job cat nap

crazy carve nutcase nucleus

creep crave pansy purse

creepy cinder pathetic pamphlet

crude creek pest plot

cruel crate poser pants

disgrace diameter psycho pallet

ditz drum retard ribbed

dork darn rude rust

drama queen summer love sad sack hang ten

dumb duct screw up fan club

dumb jock fast walk selfish streaky

dweeb debit silly silky

failure fashion sissy fibre

fake flan skank salon

floosy fluffy skanky sprite

fool fare slob sand

freak fence slutty storey

geek goat snob slur

good for nothing good for something stalker storage

goof golf stupid sizzle

half wit tree top tramp tooth

idiot abbot twit tale

ignorant intrigue useless utensil

immature immunize wannabe weekend

inbred icicle weirdo wheeze

incompetent imploringly whore widen

inferior incision wimp welt

insecure insomnia worthless warrantee

insensitive illustrator wuss wool

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APPENDIX 3High and low body�object interaction items used in Experiment 3

High body�object interaction items Low body�object interaction items

bag comb key sheet bang fate myth state

ball cord kite shirt bet fault need streak

bed couch knife shoe bliss feud oath sum

bell craft lamp snack bribe fib ode tense

belt clown lock soap brink fine pact term

bench desk mail sponge cause flaw pang theme

bike dice mask spoon chance fluke plan thud

blouse dish mop stick chant font plea trace

book doll mug stool chasm gloom plot trade

boot drawer nail straw cheer growl ploy trait

bowl drill net string chill gulf price trance

bread floss page suit choice haste pun trend

brick flute paint sword clang hint rest truce

broom food pen tape clout hoax rift trust

brush fork phone tool clue hour risk twinge

cane gate pipe torch cost hunch rule view

car gift plant toy cure inch rut wage

cart glass plate tray curse jaunt scheme way

chain glove pool tub cusp jinx scorn week

chalk glue pot tube dolt lack scourge wham

clay gown purse vest doom lease sham whim

clock grape quilt wheel ease loan shred wish

clothes gun robe wire fact loss shriek word

coat harp rope wrench fake luck skill zeal

coin jug seat yarn farce month source zone

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