ANNUIRE E SCUOTERE LA TESTA COME AZIONI SIMULATE DI APPROCCIO ED EVITAMENTO Indagine sperimentale sulla relazione tra elaborazione cognitiva e gesti embodied

The study deals with the relationship between language understanding and bodily movements, focusing on the movements involved in the two gestures of nodding and shaking of the head, a body part still not sufficiently investigated within the embodiment perspective. In 4 studies (9 experiments in total) the presence of a motor compatibility effect between the production of vertical and horizontal head movements and a high-level cognitive process such as the evaluation, both semantic and affective, of the truth-value of sentences was investigated. Through an innovative experimental procedure that, thanks to a motion detection software, made it possible to move stimuli on a computer screen directly with the action of the head, it was found that the semantic evaluation activated the simulation of the two head movements as nodding and shaking gestures, only when the evaluation was explicit. On the contrary, the affective evaluation was able to activate the two movements of the head as approach and avoidance responses even when there was no explicit intent to evaluate the stimuli, and generating a broader compatibility effect. Finally, the effect was also tested with a sample of young Bulgarians, for which the same vertical/horizontal movements can elicit the opposite meaning. Overall results show that it is possible, as well as necessary for the enhancement of the embodiment literature, to find reliable, automatic and implicit embodiment effects, and shed light on the possibility to exploit the automatic simulation of approach and avoidance movements with the head, in order to measure implicit attitudes, in social and personality research.