Boundaries to grounding abstract concepts

Pecher, Diane; Zeelenberg, René

doi:10.1098/rstb.2017.0132

Cited by 16 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 84 publications

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“…Both abstract and concrete categories showed identical patterns of effects to the overall analysis, where sensorimotor similarity and linguistic proximity independently contributed to the three measures of category production, but neither predictor consistently dominated either type of category. That is, we did not observe the pattern that abstract categories relied predominantly on linguistic information, whereas concrete categories rely predominantly on sensorimotor information (e.g., Crutch & Warrington, 2005;Dove, Barca, Tummolini, & Borghi, 2020;Pecher & Zeelenberg, 2018;Vigliocco et al, 2009). These analyses and results are available as Supplementary Materials at https://osf.io/vaq56/.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 74%

Linguistic Distributional Knowledge and Sensorimotor Grounding both Contribute to Semantic Category Production

2021

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The human conceptual system comprises simulated information of sensorimotor experience and linguistic distributional information of how words are used in language. Moreover, the linguistic shortcut hypothesis predicts that people will use computationally cheaper linguistic distributional information where it is sufficient to inform a task response. In a pre-registered category production study, we asked participants to verbally name members of concrete and abstract categories and tested whether performance could be predicted by a novel measure of sensorimotor similarity (based on an 11-dimensional representation of sensorimotor strength) and linguistic proximity (based on word co-occurrence derived from a large corpus). As predicted, both measures predicted the order and frequency of category production but, critically, linguistic proximity had an effect above and beyond sensorimotor similarity. A follow-up study using typicality ratings as an additional predictor found that typicality was often the strongest predictor of category production variables, but it did not subsume sensorimotor and linguistic effects. Finally, we created a novel, fully grounded computational model of conceptual activation during category production, which best approximated typical human performance when conceptual activation was allowed to spread indirectly between concepts, and when candidate category members came from both sensorimotor and linguistic distributional representations. Critically, model performance was indistinguishable from typical human performance. Results support the linguistic shortcut hypothesis in semantic processing and provide strong evidence that both linguistic and grounded All three authors contributed equally to the work.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 74%

Linguistic Distributional Knowledge and Sensorimotor Grounding both Contribute to Semantic Category Production

2021

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“…In their Opinion piece, Pecher and Zeelenberg [27] raise doubts on whether sensory-motor grounding alone can fully explain abstract concepts. Reviewing the key tenets of two important approaches (conceptual metaphor theory and situated conceptualization), they insist that the indirect grounding strategy that these approaches assume has been challenged by recent evidence indicating that even concrete concepts are not always grounded in sensory-motor processes.…”

Section: Grounding Of Abstract Concepts In Multiplementioning

confidence: 99%

“…One paper [22] addresses grounding and embodiment of abstract concepts from a comparative and phylogenetic point of view, another one [23] demonstrates the role and integration of sensorimotor and linguistic experience selecting a special case, that of the concept of causation. Two experimental papers [24,25] demonstrate grounding of concepts of gender, number and time, one paper [26] overviews current computational and robotics studies on grounding of abstract concepts, and finally one paper [27] provides a critical perspective on possible limitations of a grounded approach. Cuccio and Gallese [22] develop an embodied view on abstract concepts, contrasting it with the so-called Computational and Representational Theory of Mind.…”

Section: Grounding Of Abstract Concepts In Multiplementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Future research will need to convincingly highlight the main dimensions that characterize abstract concepts (linguistic, social, emotional) and to verify whether these dimensions assume different values for different kinds of abstract concepts. In our theme issue we have included a section on grounding of abstract concepts in perception and action systems [22][23][24][25][26][27] and two sections focusing on the roles of the inner experience (situatedness in inner processes [28], interoception [29] and metacognition [30]) and of the linguistic and social experience in grounding abstract concepts [31][32][33][34][35].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Varieties of abstract concepts: development, use and representation in the brain

Borghi

Barca

Binkofski

et al. 2018

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

101

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One contribution of 23 to a theme issue 'Varieties of abstract concepts: development, use and representation in the brain'. The capacity for abstract thought is one of the hallmarks of human cognition. However, the mechanisms underlying the ability to form and use abstract concepts like 'fantasy' and 'grace' have not been elucidated yet. This theme issue brings together developmental, social and cognitive psychologists, linguists, anthropologists, cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, philosophers and computer scientists to present theoretical insights and novel evidence on how abstract concepts are acquired, used and represented in the brain. Many of the contributions conceive concepts as grounded in sensorimotor systems and constrained by bodily mechanisms and structures. The theme issue develops along two main axes, related to the most promising research directions on abstract concepts. The axes focus on (i) the different kinds of abstract concepts (numbers, emotions, evaluative concepts like moral and aesthetic ones, social concepts); (ii) the role played by perception and action, language and sociality, and inner processes (emotions, interoception, metacognition) in grounding abstract concepts. Most papers adopt a cognitive science/neuroscience approach, but the theme issue also includes studies on development, on social cognition, and on how linguistic diversity shapes abstract concepts. Overall, the theme issue provides an integrated theoretical account that highlights the importance of language, sociality and inner processes for abstract concepts, and that offers new methodological tools to investigate them.This article is part of the theme issue 'Varieties of abstract concepts: development, use and representation in the brain'.

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“…Abstract concepts, like freedom or the German term schadenfreude (i.e., a mean pleasure about the misfortune of someone else), on the other hand, lack sensory-motor experience with a physical referent and thus challenge the idea of word meaning being grounded in sensorimotor experience (Borghi et al, 2017;Pecher & Zeelenberg, 2018). We often encounter and acquire abstract words in a verbal or written linguistic context (Borghi et al, 2018;Della Rosa et al, 2010).…”

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confidence: 99%

That means something to me: the effect of linguistic and emotional experience on the acquisition and processing of novel abstract concepts

Espey¹,

Ghio²,

Bellebaum³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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This study aimed to investigate the acquisition and representation of novel abstract concepts grounded in linguistic and emotional experience. In five linguistic training sessions, participants learned emotional and neutral abstract concepts and either engaged in explicit mental imagery (n = 32) or lexico-semantic processing (n = 34) with the linguistic material. After training, a high lexical decision and semantic judgment accuracy showed that participants successfully acquired the novel concepts. A feature production task showed that emotional concepts were generally enriched by a surplus of (emotion) features, and neutral concepts by relatively more cognition features. More features led to a higher LDT accuracy but not to faster reactions, which cannot be fully explained by noise due to the online assessment as, descriptively, more features slowed down reactions in participants, who did the imagery task and accelerated them for those, who did the rephrasing task. Our findings support the notion that linguistic and emotional information are crucial for grounding abstract concepts, and that this grounding does not rely on explicit imagery. Future research might combine the linguistic training paradigm with controlled reaction time and electrophysiological measurements to further corroborate the experiential grounding of abstract words.

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Boundaries to grounding abstract concepts

Cited by 16 publications

References 84 publications

Linguistic Distributional Knowledge and Sensorimotor Grounding both Contribute to Semantic Category Production

Linguistic Distributional Knowledge and Sensorimotor Grounding both Contribute to Semantic Category Production

Varieties of abstract concepts: development, use and representation in the brain

That means something to me: the effect of linguistic and emotional experience on the acquisition and processing of novel abstract concepts

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