Fig. 2.

Schematic illustration of the trial sequence in the fMRI experiment. A trial sequence started with a display of objects and communicating actors. A context sentence (e.g., “What are these called?” in the Naming condition, or “What can I get you?” in the Requesting condition) was uttered by the Partner. Following this, a series of 5 scenes was shown, in which the Speaker's face appeared together with the critical spoken utterance which served for Naming vs. Requesting an object (note that the words were identical for both speech acts, see the Materials and methods section). The word scenes were followed by a series of 5 action scenes, involving the objects mentioned in the word utterances (handing over an object in the Requesting condition or pointing at it in the Naming condition). Each context sentence, word, face and action video clips lasted about 2 s.