High sensorimotor similarity to predictable words in context slows down reading

This repository contains scripts and data collected and used in a study on sensorimotor pre-activation in reading (Kenjeeva, Alishahi, Cassani & Venhuizen, 2026; pre-print can be found here: ...). We found that humans pre-activate sensorimotor information of highly expected continuations in context (e.g., sensorimotor information of "watch" when reading "the impatient man kept glancing at his ..."), which slows down reading of words with visually similar referents (e.g., "compass"). We share here scripts and data for the stimuli design, the preliminary norming studies and the self-paced reading study, which can be used to replicate our results. For more information about the repository, please refer to the README.

The study was approved by the Research Ethics and Data Management Committee (REDC) of the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences (TSHD) of Tilburg University, code REDC2024.40.