Selective Influences of Precision and Power Grips on Speech Categorization

Recent studies have shown that articulatory gestures are systematically associated with specific manual grip actions. Here we show that executing such actions can influence performance on a speech-categorization task. Participants watched and/or listened to speech stimuli while executing either a power or a precision grip. Grip performance influenced the syllable categorization by increasing the proportion of responses of the syllable congruent with the executed grip (power grip—[ke] and precision grip—[te]). Two follow-up experiments indicated that the effect was based on action-induced bias in selecting the syllable.