Short article Motor simulation in verbal knowledge acquisition Markus Paulus, Oliver Lindemann, and Harold Bekkering Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands Recent research highlights the importance of motor processes for a wide range of cognitive functions such as object perception and language comprehension. It is unclear, however, whether the involve- ment of the motor system goes beyond the processing of information that is gathered through active action experiences and affects also the representation of knowledge acquired through verbal learning. We tested this prediction by varying the presence of motor interference (i.e., squeezing a ball vs. oddball detection task) while participants verbally acquired functional object knowledge and examined the effects on a subsequent object detection task. Results revealed that learning of functional object knowledge was only impaired when participants performed an effector-specific motor task while train- ing. The present finding of an effector-specific motor interference effect on object learning demon- strates the crucial role of the motor system in the acquisition of novel object knowledge and provides support for an embodied account to perception and cognition. Keywords: Embodied cognition; Tool use; Semantic learning; Object perception; Implicit memory. Imagine yourself ambling through an archaeo- logical museum and observing the exhibits of objects from the ancient empires. Some of the tools used in these times seem very unfamiliar to you. Fortunately, although you will never experi- ence their function through your own actions, you can make sense of these objects through reading the explanations on the information panel. As this example illustrates, knowledge about the functional use of objects can be acquired even without handling an object. But how do we acquire functional object knowledge that is not based on direct sensorimotor experiences? Developmental research has accumulated evidence demonstrating that action knowledge about tools is acquired through motor experiences (Barrett, Davis, & Needham, 2007) or the obser- vations of others’ actions (Elsner & Pauen, 2007). These two learning mechanisms indicate that functional object knowledge goes beyond a direct association between visual object features and afforded actions (Tucker & Ellis, 1998; cf. Gibson, 1979). In the same vein, recent studies demonstrate that participants are slower to ident- ify an object depicted in a position that deviates from its actual correct use than an object depicted Correspondence should be addressed to Markus Paulus, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands. E-mail: m.paulus@donders.ru.nl We thank Sabine Hunnius for useful discussions of this project as well as Terry Eskenazi for comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. The present study was supported by a VICI Grant (453 – 05 – 001) from the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and the ICIS project (BSIK03024) sponsored by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs. # 2009 The Experimental Psychology Society 1 http://www.psypress.com/qjep DOI:10.1080/17470210903108405 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY iFirst, 1–8 Downloaded By: [Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen] At: 18:41 20 September 2009