How word comprehension can be sped up decoded

Researchers have shown how word comprehension can be sped up, an advance that could offer an approach for new therapies, such as treating stroke patients.
Hearing or seeing a word does not mean that it is immediately understood. The brain must first recognise the letters as such, put them together, and "look up" what the word means in its mental lexicon.
In an experiment, researchers at Bielefeld University in Germany have shown how word comprehension can be sped up - by having study participants grasp objects while reading at the same time.
According to the researchers, the method could offer an approach for new therapies, such as treating stroke patients.

"Latest theories in cognitive science research hypothesise that our memory also records physical sensations as part of the words stored," said Dirk Koester, cognitive psychologists at Bielefeld's Cluster of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) .
"Similar to an entry in a reference book, the brain records a word like 'whisk', associating it with concepts such as 'inanimate' and 'kitchen device.'

"In addition to this, the brain connects the word to one's own experience - how a whisk feels, for instance, and that a spinning motion is related to it," said Koester.
In the study conducted with 28 participants, Koester and colleagues lend support for the thesis of the embodiment of knowledge.

"When the study participants had to grasp an object while reading, their brain processed parts of the meaning of the words earlier than in previous studies in which words were evaluated without something being gripped," Koester said.
The participants sat in front of a computer screen, where three cubes were lying next to each other on the tabletop: one about the size of an apple, one the size of a table tennis ball, and one the size of a dice. On the screen behind the cubes, three white fields were displayed.
Words then appeared in one of the fields on the screen - sometimes made-up words, sometimes real ones. When a pseudo-word such as "whask" was displayed, the participants did not have to do anything.

However, if a real noun like "orange" appeared, they were supposed to grip the cube corresponding to that respective field. An EEG electrode cap recorded brain activity, allowing the researchers to then evaluate how the word was processed.
As demonstrated in previous studies, it takes the brain a third of a second to process a word.
"In our study, however, we were able to show that comprehension can already begin much earlier, after just a tenth of a second - if a grasping action is required," said Koester.
This study not only provides evidence that the brain has a common control centre for language and movement, but "it also shows that our brain's processing steps shift very quickly and adjust to current tasks - in this case, the task of grasping something while reading," he said.

The findings were published in the journal PLOS One.