Is justice grounded? How expertise shapes conceptual representation of institutional concepts

Villani, Caterina; D’Ascenzo, Stefania; Borghi, Anna M.; Roversi, Corrado; Benassi, Mariagrazia; Lugli, Luisa

doi:10.1007/s00426-021-01492-8

Cited by 12 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 93 publications

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“…In addition, recent studies have revealed that the expertise of participants and the culture might influence the perceived role of sensorimotor features. In a rating study, law experts judged institutional concepts as involving more the emotional dimension and the sense of touch than a control group; since touch is typically associated with concrete concepts, these results suggest that expertise might contribute to rendering abstract concepts more concrete [125].…”

Section: Different Abstract Concepts Are Couched In Different Modalitiesmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…The specific recruitment of linguistic information in the representation of abstract concepts has been confirmed by rating studies showing that abstract concepts are judged to be more associated with the mouth effector as compared with concrete concepts, which in turn are more associated with hands or other effectors eliciting action patterns ( [124], see also [123]). Ratings and behavioral studies have further suggested that this association with the mouth is particularly marked with some kinds of abstract concepts, such as mental states and institutional concepts (e.g., [124,125]).…”

Section: Abstract Concepts Language and Their Relation With Mouth Motor Areasmentioning

confidence: 99%

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From Affordances to Abstract Words: The Flexibility of Sensorimotor Grounding

et al. 2021

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The sensorimotor system plays a critical role in several cognitive processes. Here, we review recent studies documenting this interplay at different levels. First, we concentrate on studies that have shown how the sensorimotor system is flexibly involved in interactions with objects. We report evidence demonstrating how social context and situations influence affordance activation, and then focus on tactile and kinesthetic components in body–object interactions. Then, we turn to word use, and review studies that have shown that not only concrete words, but also abstract words are grounded in the sensorimotor system. We report evidence that abstract concepts activate the mouth effector more than concrete concepts, and discuss this effect in light of studies on adults, children, and infants. Finally, we pinpoint possible sensorimotor mechanisms at play in the acquisition and use of abstract concepts. Overall, we show that the involvement of the sensorimotor system is flexibly modulated by context, and that its role can be integrated and flanked by that of other systems such as the linguistic system. We suggest that to unravel the role of the sensorimotor system in cognition, future research should fully explore the complexity of this intricate, and sometimes slippery, relation.

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Section: Different Abstract Concepts Are Couched In Different Modalitiesmentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: Abstract Concepts Language and Their Relation With Mouth Motor Areasmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Affordances to Abstract Words: The Flexibility of Sensorimotor Grounding

et al. 2021

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“…In a related study, Villani et al [106] proposed a further distinction between pure institutional concepts (e.g., marriage) that relied more on exteroceptive information, and metainstitutional concepts (e.g., duty) for which interoceptive, affective and metacognitive information was more important. Future research that applies a data-driven approach across a large sample of abstract and concrete words will shed light on more specific socialness constructs and the way in which individual social concepts potentially cluster together into sub-types.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Semantics: The Organisation and Grounding of Abstract Concepts

Pexman¹,

Diveica²,

Binney³

2021

Preprint

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concepts, like justice and friendship, are a central feature of our daily lives. Traditionally, abstract concepts are distinguished from other concepts in that they cannot be directly experienced through the senses. As such, they pose a challenge for strongly embodied models of semantic representation that assume a central role for sensorimotor information. There is growing recognition, however, that it is possible for meaning to be ‘grounded’ via cognitive systems, including those involved in processing language and emotion. In this article, we focus on the specific proposal that social significance is a key feature in the representation of some concepts. We begin by reviewing recent evidence in favour of this proposal from the fields of cognitive science and neuroimaging. We then discuss the limited extent to which there is consensus about the definition of ‘socialness’ and propose essential next steps for research in this domain. Taking one such step, we describe preliminary data from an unprecedented large-scale rating study that can help determine how socialness is distinct from other facets of word meaning. We provide a backdrop of contemporary theories regarding semantic representation and social cognition and highlight important predictions for both brain and behaviour.

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“…This could be interpreted to mean that some abstract concepts rely more on direct grounding via the sensory-motor system, while others depend more on interoception or even mostly on indirect grounding via language. A second study by Villani et al ( 2021b ) not only reiterated that abstract concepts appear grounded in different ways from each other, but also showed that how concepts are grounded depends on personal experiences, in this case expertise in the legal domain. Their findings showed differences in how abstract concepts are understood by legal experts/non-experts, in terms of the ratings they gave words on 16 dimensions.…”

Section: Grounding Abstract Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ultimate Grounding of Abstract Concepts: A Graded Account

Reinboth

Farkaš

2022

Journal of Cognition

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ion, one of the hallmarks of human cognition, continues to be the topic of a strong debate. The primary disagreement concerns whether or not abstract concepts can be accounted for within the scope of embodied cognition. In this paper, we introduce the embodied approach to conceptual knowledge and distinguish between embodiment and grounding, where grounding is the general term for how concepts initially acquire their meaning. Referring to numerous pieces of empirical evidence, we emphasise that, ultimately, all concepts are acquired via interaction with the world via two main pathways: embodiment and social interaction. The first pathway is direct and primarily involves action/perception, interoception and emotions. The second pathway is indirect, being mediated by language in particular. Evidence from neuroscience, psychology and cognitive linguistics shows these pathways have different properties, roles in cognition and temporal profiles. Human development also places revealing constraints on how children develop the ability to reason more abstractly as they grow up. We recognize language as a crucial cognitive faculty with several roles enabling the acquisition of abstract concepts indirectly. Three detailed case studies on body-specificity hypothesis, abstract verbs and mathematics are used to argue that a compelling case has accumulated in favour of the ultimate grounding of abstract concepts in an agent's interaction with its world, primarily relying on the direct pathway. We consolidate the debate through multidisciplinary evidence for the idea that abstractness is a graded, rather than a binary property of concepts.

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Is justice grounded? How expertise shapes conceptual representation of institutional concepts

Cited by 12 publications

References 93 publications

From Affordances to Abstract Words: The Flexibility of Sensorimotor Grounding

From Affordances to Abstract Words: The Flexibility of Sensorimotor Grounding

Social Semantics: The Organisation and Grounding of Abstract Concepts

Ultimate Grounding of Abstract Concepts: A Graded Account

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