Individual differences in visual imagery vividness predict neural responses to language-induced visual expectations
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Grounded accounts of meaning propose that language comprehension recruits sensorimotor systems to represent described content. However, people differ markedly in how vividly they can picture objects and scenes in the mind's eye, raising the question of whether perceptual simulation is recruited similarly across individuals. We addressed this question using the sentence-picture verification task, in which pictures are verified more quickly when their shape matches rather than mismatches the state implied by a preceding sentence, a match effect taken to index perceptual simulation. In preregistered Experiment 1 (N = 110), matching pictures were verified faster and more accurately than mismatching pictures, yet the magnitude of this effect did not vary with imagery vividness. We reasoned that similar behavior might arise from different processes, so in Experiment 2 we recorded picture-locked event-related potentials (ERPs) from 34 participants performing the verification task. Shape mismatch elicited an early right-posterior response at 150-190 ms and a later, broader posterior response at 300-500 ms. Crucially, imagery vividness interacted with the shape match effect in the early window only: stronger imagers showed a pronounced right-posterior negativity, whereas verbal thinking tendency did not, indicating specificity to visual imagery. Together, results suggest that comparable behavioral outcomes may arise through partly different paths to meaning: an early, visually specific route recruited more strongly by vivid imagers, and a later conceptual route shared more broadly across the imagery spectrum. Language comprehension may draw on both perceptual simulation and linguistic associations, with the relative contribution of each depending in part on the comprehender.
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W7204460928
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