We demonstrate in two experiments that real and imagined body movements appropriate to metaphorical phrases facilitate people's immediate comprehension of these phrases. Participants first learned to make different body movements given specific cues. In two reading time studies, people were faster to understand a metaphorical phrase, such as push…

Bodily manipulations, such as juggling, suggest a well-synchronized physical interaction as if the person were a physics expert. The juggler uses "knowledge" that is rooted in bodily experience, to interact with the environment. Such enacted bodily knowledge is powerful, efficient, predictive, and relates to sensory perception of the dynamics of…

This study investigated the metaphors that prospective teachers in Turkey (N = 1,142) formulated to describe the concept of "teacher". Participants completed the prompt "A teacher is like...because..." by focusing on only one metaphor to indicate their conceptualization of teaching and learning. Altogether 64 valid personal…