In this page you will find papers that are under editorial review. All publications that are either in press or have been published are accessible in the PEOPLE  page of this Web Site. Should you wish to access any of the papers listed below, then please email us (see PEOPLE pages for email addresses). We would be most grateful for any comments that you may have.

• G.R. Semin & E.R. Smith (Eds.) (2008), Embodied grounding: Social, cognitive, affective, and neuroscientific approaches. New York: Cambridge University Press.
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• Foroni, F. & Semin, G. R. (under review). Language that puts you in touch with your bodily feelings: The Multimodal Responsiveness of Affective Expressions.

• ABSTRACT: Observing a smile activates the very same facial muscles in a perceiver (e.g., Dimberg, Thunberg, & Elmehed, 2000). In experiment 1, we predicted and revealed that verbal stimuli (verbs of action) that unambiguously map emotional expressions elicit the same facial muscle activity (Facial EMG) as do visual stimuli. This furnished evidence that language mapping facial muscular activity is not amodal as traditionally thought, but bodily (somatically) grounded. These findings were extended in Exp. 2, in which subliminally presented verbal stimuli were shown to drive muscle activation and shape our judgments, but not when muscle activation is blocked. This research provides an important bridge between research on the neurobiological basis of language and related behavioral research.   The implications of these findings for theories of language and other domains in cognitive psychology (e.g., priming) are discussed..

• Lanciano ^, T., Curci, A. & Semin^, G. R. (under review). The Two Pathways of Flashbulb Memory Formation:   An Experimental Approach.
• ABSTRACT: For many years, researchers have debated whether Flashbulb memories (FBMs, Brown & Kulik, 1977) can be considered as a special class of autobiographical memories that persist vividly and unchanged, or alternatively are affected by social and reconstructive factors as an ordinary memory. Two pathways have been advanced to account for the formation of FBMs: One, the direct pathway involves emotional factors acting at the encoding level (special encoding hypothesis based on the Now Print! theory), and two, the indirect pathway, which involves social and reconstructive factors at a post-encoding level (reconstructive hypothesis). Two studies investigated the two pathways of FBM formation in an experimental context. Paralleling to FBM findings, the two studies revealed that memories of reception context are characterized by vividness and richness of details but, at the same time, they are also affected by reconstructive factors.
• Lakens, L., Semin, G. R. & Foroni, F. (under review). But for the bad, there would not be good. Conceptual opposition vs. Mere Association: Metaphoric Grounding of Valence .
• ABSTRACT: The embodiment orientation has focused on how we understand and communicate abstract concepts, by demonstrating how such concepts are grounded. This research has proceeded by demonstrating co-occurrences between abstract concepts and perceptual dimensions (e.g., vertical position) or perceptual features (e.g. color).   In a series of 5 experiments, we - for the first time - highlight the process involved in the experiential-perceptual grounding of abstract concepts. The first 4 experiments reveal that the grounding of valence (negative and positive) in color (black and white) is the result of a conceptual opposition where white acquires positive valence only as an emergent outcome of a conceptual opposition with black and negativity. White remains an evaluatively neutral color where such conceptual opposition is absent. In the final experiment, we highlight the responsible process (conceptual opposition) for the experiential-perceptual grounding of abstract concepts by means of a priming experiment. Implications for embodied grounding are discussed.
• Jiga -Boy, G. M., Clark, A. E., & Semin, G. R. (under review).   So much to do and so little time: Effort and perceived temporal distance
• ABSTRACT: It is argued that perceived temporal distance to a social event, similar to perceived spatial distance (Proffitt, 2006a), should be subject to the demands an event imposes upon a person’s capacities to act upon it. In three experiments, we examined the hypothesis that the perception of temporal distance to future events is influenced by the effort required to realize them. Experiments 1 and 2 confirmed that perceived temporal distance is reduced as a function of the effort required to realize the event. When high versus low effort were primed independently (Experiment 3), the high effort condition was shown to reduce perceived temporal distance to the realization of an event compared to the low effort condition, providing causal confirmation for the hypothesis. The implications of these findings for temporal distance models are discussed.
• Ijzerman, H. & Semin, G. R. (under review). The Thermometer of Social Relations: Mapping Social Proximity on Temperature.
• ABSTRACT: “Holding warm feelings towards someone” and “giving someone the cold shoulder” both indicate different levels of social proximity. In the current article, we show effects that go beyond these metaphors we live by (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). In three experiments, we show how warmer conditions induce (1) higher social proximity, (2) more concrete language use, and (3) a more relational focus as compared to colder conditions. Different temperature conditions were created by either handing participants warm or cold beverages (Experiment 1) or placing them in warm or cold ambient conditions (within comfortable ranges, Experiments 2 and 3). These studies corroborate recent findings from (embodied) cognition and go beyond Lakoff and Johnson’s (1999) original proposal. Our studies show the systemic interdependence between language, perception, and social proximity; namely, how environmentally induced conditions shape not only language use, but also perception and the construal of social relationships.