Crossing hands behind your back reduces recall of manual action sentences and alters brain dynamics

The Postural Effect on the Memory of Manipulable Objects

“…However, the present results invalidated this hypothesis by showing that the hands behind the back posture during the study phase decreased the recall of manipulable objects, although participants also had their hands behind their back during the test phase. This is consistent with recent findings showing that maintaining the hands behind the back during the learning phase decreases motor related activity (de Vega et al, 2021). Furthermore, these results are in accordance with the idea that a context that does not favor action has a negative impact on motor simulation.…”

“…First of all, the replication of the PI effect confirms the view that motor information can be part of the memory trace and that motor simulation has a functional role in the representation of knowledge. Our results also cast a new light on the previous work that observed a PI effect (Dutriaux et al, 2019Dutriaux & Gyselinck, 2016;de Vega et al, 2021). As emphasized in the introduction, this pattern of results could have been interpreted as an interference of the hands behind the back posture, but also as a facilitation of the hands with the hands in front.…”

“…Similar results were observed with pictures of objects and words (see also Dutriaux et al, 2021). These effects were in addition extended to short phrases including a verb and a noun in further experiments (de Vega et al, 2021; Dutriaux et al, 2019). The results obtained in these experiments suggest that motor simulation has a functional role in the encoding process (see also Villatte et al, 2021; Vitale et al, 2021).…”

Disturbing the activity of the primary motor cortex by means of transcranial magnetic stimulation affects long term memory of sentences referred to manipulable objects

“…These studies showed that holding the hands behind the back interferes with the memorization of manipulable object presented as pictures or as words, but does not affect recall of non-manipulable objects or words (Dutriaux and Gyselinck, 2016); the hands behind back posture also interfered with the memory of action sentences compared to attentional sentences (Dutriaux et al, 2018). In addition, an EEG study using the same memory paradigm, found suppression in fronto-central beta rhythm desynchronization, a brain signature of motor processes, when participants held the hands-behind-the-back posture, compared with the hands in front posture, but only during the processing of manual action sentences (de Vega et al, 2021). Taken together, all these findings suggest the key role of neural motor simulation as a functional aspect of memory for action language.…”

“…These studies are not entirely conclusive, however, because most of them tested the functional impact of M1 on performance in an immediate task, typically while the received action verb is still active in working memory. However, some behavioral (Dutriaux and Gyselinck, 2016;Dutriaux et al, 2018) and EEG studies (de Vega et al, 2021) on embodied meaning suggest that motor simulations play a crucial role in the long-term memory of nouns in the context of action verbs. These studies showed that holding the hands behind the back interferes with the memorization of manipulable object presented as pictures or as words, but does not affect recall of non-manipulable objects or words (Dutriaux and Gyselinck, 2016); the hands behind back posture also interfered with the memory of action sentences compared to attentional sentences (Dutriaux et al, 2018).…”