Abstract Concepts and Pictures of Real‐World Situations Activate One Another

Abstract

concepts typically are defined in terms of lacking physical or perceptual referents. We argue instead that they are not devoid of perceptual information because knowledge of real-world situations is an important component of learning and using many abstract concepts. Although the relationship between perceptual information and abstract concepts is less straightforward than for concrete concepts, situation-based perceptual knowledge is part of many abstract concepts. In Experiment 1, participants made lexical decisions to abstract words that were preceded by related and unrelated pictures of situations. For example, share was preceded by a picture of two girls sharing a cob of corn. When pictures were presented for 500 ms, latencies did not differ. However, when pictures were presented for 1,000 ms, decision latencies were significantly shorter for abstract words preceded by related versus unrelated pictures. Because the abstract concepts corresponded to the pictured situation as a whole, rather than a single concrete object or entity, the necessary relational processing takes time. In Experiment 2, on each trial, an abstract word was presented for 250 ms, immediately followed by a picture. Participants indicated whether or not the picture showed a normal situation. Decision latencies were significantly shorter for pictures preceded by related versus unrelated abstract words. Our experiments provide evidence that knowledge of events and situations is important for learning and using at least some types of abstract concepts. That is, abstract concepts are grounded in situations, but in a more complex manner than for concrete concepts. Although people's understanding of abstract concepts certainly includes knowledge gained from language describing situations and events for which those concepts are relevant, sensory and motor information experienced during real-life events is important as well.

Intangible features extraction in the processing of abstract concepts: Evidence from picture-word priming

“…For this second experiment, in which concrete and abstract picture primes were presented together we also expected shorter latencies for related picture-word pairs than for unrelated ones in the concrete picture condition. However, and in line with the previously discussed role of situational features in the representation of abstract concepts, we expected this facilitatory effect to be limited to concrete picture primes, insofar as they allow for a more tangible form of situational or contextual information, and to disappear in respect of abstract picture primes (see [38]). Tangible features, as opposed to intangible ones, should allow for easier processing [40].…”

Situational systematicity: A role for schema in understanding the differences between abstract and concrete concepts

“…In the one such 1 In fact, the greater activity in left IFG (and other left-lateralized frontal and temporal regions) often observed for abstract compared to concrete concepts in functional MRI studies has typically been interpreted in support of dualcoding theory and the role of language in representing abstract concepts (e.g., Binder et al, 2005; for meta-analyses, see Binder et al, 2009;Wang et al, 2010), rather than as evidence of abstract concepts requiring greater top-down control (e.g., Hoffman et al, 2015). study to date (McRae et al, 2018), real-world pictures depicting events with an abstract concept at play (e.g., two girls sharing a cob of corn) effected faster response times to related (e.g., share) as compared to unrelated (e.g., convocation) abstract words. Words referring to abstract concepts also activated situations-that is, response times were faster for related situations following an abstract word.…”

“…Notably, much of this work on abstract concept processing has been on recognition or processing of words that refer to abstract concepts rather than on recognition of abstract concepts directly from the situations they denote (but see McRae et al, 2018). As noted earlier, semantic diversity, for example, has been operationalized in terms of words in their linguistic contexts, as observed in linguistic corpora.…”

“…For example, the mutual activation observed by McRae et al (2018) only tells us that abstract concepts and situations that clearly depict those concepts prime each other (the scenes were normed such that a separate group of participants reliably listed the target abstract word in response to the picture). It can be relatively easy to point to an instance of sharing (depending on the kind of sharing), or even to define the range of situations in which sharing might be happening.…”

Definition of Concept in the Russian Linguistic Field as a Cognitive Category

“…The linguacultural concept is a bunch of ethno culturally marked meaning, necessarily has its name, which usually coincides with the dominant of a certain synonymous series or with the core of a certain lexico-semantic field. People's understanding of abstract concepts can include knowledge gained from language describing situations and events for which those concepts are relevant, such as sensory and motor information (McRae et al, 2018).…”