Concrete spatial language: See what I mean?

Complementarity of Space and Time in Distance Representations

“…99-103). It seems that the results obtained in psycholinguistic experiments (Matlock, 2004b(Matlock, , 2006Matlock & Richardson, 2004;Richardson & Matlock, 2007), and brain studies (Wallentin et al, 2005;Saygin et al, 2010;Cacciari et al, 2011) demonstrate the fictive mode, in which processing of fictive motion takes place in a manner somewhat parallel to actual motion. This mode has arguably a greater potential for denoting spatial extension in terms of duration, since it evokes an association with physical movement.…”

“…Wallentin et al (2005) found that fictive motion sentences activate the left posterior middle temporal cortex, which is the brain area responsible for visual processing of complex action knowledge. It is sensitive, for example, to visual perception of motion implied by still pictures or mental navigation.…”

Functional Neuroanatomy of Contextual Acquisition of Concrete and Abstract Words

“…The processing of abstract words has been associated with greater activation in areas such as the middle and superior temporal gyrus and the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), which are thought to be involved in semantic processing (Pexman, Hargreaves, Edwards, Henry, & Goodyear, 2007;Fliessbach, Weis, Klaver, Elger, & Weber, 2006;Binder, Westbury, McKiernan, Possing, & Medler, 2005;Sabsevitz, Medler, Seidenberg, & Binder, 2005;Wallentin, Ostergaard, Lund, Ostergaard, & Roepstorff, 2005;Fiebach & Friederici, 2004;Noppeney & Price, 2004;Whatmough, Verret, Fung, & Chertkow, 2004;Grossman et al, 2002;Friederici, Opitz, & von Cramon, 2000;Jessen et al, 2000;Wise et al, 2000;Kiehl et al, 1999;Perani et al, 1999;Mellet, Tzourio, Denis, & Mazoyer, 1998). By contrast, concrete words show greater activity in regions associated with higher levels of visual processing, such as the ventral anterior part of the fusiform gyrus (Bedny & Thompson-Schill, 2006;Fliessbach et al, 2006;Sabsevitz et al, 2005;Wallentin et al, 2005;Fiebach & Friederici, 2004;Giesbrecht, Camblin, & Swaab, 2004;Whatmough et al, 2004;Wise et al, 2000;Mellet et al, 1998;D'Esposito et al, 1997;Fletcher et al, 1995). However, other studies have failed to find greater activations for concrete words in these areas (e.g., Binder et al, 2005;Jessen et al, 2000) or in any other brain regions (Noppeney & Price, 2004;Friederici et al, 2000;Kiehl et al, 1999;…”

Things to think with: words and objects as material symbols

“…'the man goes into the house') to abstract (e.g. 'the man goes into politics') radically shifts the contrastive brain activation from a typical bilateral posterior temporoparietal 'spatial navigation' pattern to a typical 'language-like' left-lateralized inferior-frontal pattern ( Wallentin et al 2005b).…”