The Neural Representation of Abstract Words: The Role of Emotion

Abstract

It is generally assumed that abstract concepts are linguistically coded, in line with imaging evidence of greater engagement of the left perisylvian language network for abstract than concrete words (Binder JR, Desai RH, Graves WW, Conant LL. 2009. Where is the semantic system? A critical review and meta-analysis of 120 functional neuroimaging studies. Cerebral Cortex. 19:2767-2796; Wang J, Conder JA, Blitzer DN, Shinkareva SV. 2010. Neural representation of abstract and concrete concepts: A meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies. Hum Brain Map. 31:1459-1468). Recent behavioral work, which used tighter matching of items than previous studies, however, suggests that abstract concepts also entail affective processing to a greater extent than concrete concepts (Kousta S-T, Vigliocco G, Vinson DP, Andrews M, Del Campo E. The representation of abstract words: Why emotion matters. J Exp Psychol Gen. 140:14-34). Here we report a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment that shows greater engagement of the rostral anterior cingulate cortex, an area associated with emotion processing (e.g., Etkin A, Egner T, Peraza DM, Kandel ER, Hirsch J. 2006. Resolving emotional conflict: A role for the rostral anterior cingulate cortex in modulating activity in the amygdala. Neuron. 52:871), in abstract processing. For abstract words, activation in this area was modulated by the hedonic valence (degree of positive or negative affective association) of our items. A correlation analysis of more than 1,400 English words further showed that abstract words, in general, receive higher ratings for affective associations (both valence and arousal) than concrete words, supporting the view that engagement of emotional processing is generally required for processing abstract words. We argue that these results support embodiment views of semantic representation, according to which, whereas concrete concepts are grounded in our sensory-motor experience, affective experience is crucial in the grounding of abstract concepts.

Words’ Origin of an Affective State, but not Valence, Shape the Reaction Latencies in a Word-Sign Choosing Ambiguous Task

“…What is more, concreteness was found to interact with valence; abstract words were found to be perceived in a more valenced way than concrete words (c.f. Vigliocco et al 2014).…”

The neural basis of conceptualizing the same action at different levels of abstraction

“…While these dimensions were highly correlated in the present study and may naturally correlate in language about actions, there is at least some evidence that they can be dissociated experimentally. For instance, recent work provides evidence for unique effects of concreteness, imageability, and valence in the neural responses to action verbs (Skipper and Olson, 2014;Vigliocco et al, 2014).…”

What can autism teach us about the role of sensorimotor systems in higher cognition? New clues from studies on language, action semantics, and abstract emotional concept processing

“…The learning of these words is possible in the context of performing the action overtly, watching others do so, or when the context leads to a 'simulation' of the actions in the mind and brain. The situation is much more complicated in the case of abstract emotion words, and possibly in the case of all abstract words, which, according to Vigliocco et al (2014), are often emotion-related. Abstract emotion words need to be related to an 'inner state', but problematically such an inner state would not be directly accessible to the teacher who could teach the languagelearner the correct use of emotion words.…”