Real-Time Language Processing as Embodied and Embedded in Joint Action

As the field of psycholinguistics gradually confronts the evidence that language is enmeshed with perceptual-motor processes, it may be in for a shock when it learns that perceptual-motor processes are themselves comprised of the relationship between organism and environment (e.g., ecological perception and active externalism). Therefore, not only is language interactive with perception and action, it is part of the continuous perception-action loop that a person develops with his/her environment. Crucially, one’s environment often has other people whose linguistic and perceptual-motor processes are also being externalised via their perception-action loops. As a result, real-time language processing appears to play a key role in allowing multiple people’s perception-action loops to become entangled and to produce interesting varieties of behavioural synchrony.