Imagine that! ERPs provide evidence for distinct hemispheric contributions to the processing of concrete and abstract concepts

Abstract

Although abstract and concrete concepts are processed and remembered differently, the underlying nature of those differences remains in dispute. The current study used visual half-field (VF) presentation methods and event-related potential (ERP) measures to examine how the left (LH) and right (RH) cerebral hemispheres process concrete and abstract meanings of polysemous nouns (e.g., “green book,” referring to the concrete, physical object that is a book, versus “engaging book,” referring to the abstract information that a book conveys). With presentation to the right VF, nouns preceded by concrete modifiers were associated with more positivity on the P2 and N400, suggesting that concrete concepts were easier for the LH to process perceptually and semantically. In contrast, with presentation to the left VF (RH), nouns used in a concrete sense elicited a sustained frontal negativity (500-900 ms) that has been previously linked to imagery. The results thus reveal multiple, distinct neural and cognitive sources for concreteness effects and point to a critical role for the RH in linking language input to sensory imagery.

Three symbol ungrounding problems: Abstract concepts and the future of embodied cognition

“…For instance, Adorni and Proverbio (2012) applied LORETA source reconstruction to an ERP experiment involving a lexical decision task and found evidence of increased activation of the left medial frontal gyrus and the left temporal cortex, as well as decreased activation of extrastriate visual areas, with abstract relative to concrete words (see Lehmann, Pascual-Marqui, Strik, & Koenig, 2010, for similar findings using different tasks). In another ERP study, distinct concreteness effects were elicited in the left and right hemispheres (Huang, Lee, & Federmeier, 2010). A number of neuroimaging studies have shown that superior regions of the left temporal lobe (Binder, Westbury, McKiernan, Possing, & Medler, 2005;Giesbrecht, Gamblin, & Swaab, 2004;Mellet, Tzourio, Denis, & Mazoyer, 1998;Noppeney & Price, 2004;Sabsevitz, Medler, Seidenberg, & Binder, 2005) and inferior regions of the left prefrontal cortex Giesbrecht et al, 2004;Goldberg, Perfetti, & Schneider, 2006;Noppeney & Price, 2004;Sabsevitz et al, 2005) are activated to a greater degree by tasks involving abstract concepts.…”

Describing Sensory Experience: The Genre of Wine Reviews

“…The use of descriptors from such domains as fruit, minerals and spices are necessary due to the relative lack of vocabulary resources, in particular in the domain of smell (Rouby et al 2002;Paradis 2010;Caballero & Paradis forthcoming). Such construals of meaning are taken to be motivated by the fact that concrete word meanings, in contrast to abstract ones, elicit qualitatively different processing in the form of mental images in that they evoke rich sensory experiences which are intimately tied up with our experiences in life (Huang et al 2010). …”

Chapter 9. We drink with our eyes first

“…The elusive mixture of sensations in wine tasting takes the form of mixed metonymizations, metaphors and similes in wine reviewing discourse. Such construals of meaning are taken to be motivated by the fact that concrete word meanings elicit qualitatively different processing in the form of mental imagery than abstract word meanings in that they evoke rich sensory experiences which are intimately tied up with our experiences in life (Huang et al 2010). Expressions evoking a mixture of ontological sources, construed through synaesthetic metonymizations (zone activations) of specific conceptual dimensions or through metaphors and similes are essential for the transfer of sensory perceptions into text and discourse (Caballero & Suárez Toste 2010;Paradis 2010;Caballero & Paradis 2013; The contention of this chapter is that when we experience comestibles or beverages such as wine, our entire sensorium is activated at more or less the same time along with our aesthetic and emotional responses.…”