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Sensorimotor and interoceptive dimensions in concrete and abstract concepts

Recent theories propose that abstract concepts, compared to concrete ones, might activate to a larger extent interoceptive, social and linguistic experiences. At the same time, recent research has underlined the importance of investigating how different sub-kinds of abstract concepts are represented...

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Autores principales: Villani, Caterina, Lugli, Luisa, Liuzza, Marco Tullio, Nicoletti, Roberto, Borghi, Anna M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier Inc. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7492812/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32952286
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2020.104173
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author Villani, Caterina
Lugli, Luisa
Liuzza, Marco Tullio
Nicoletti, Roberto
Borghi, Anna M.
author_facet Villani, Caterina
Lugli, Luisa
Liuzza, Marco Tullio
Nicoletti, Roberto
Borghi, Anna M.
author_sort Villani, Caterina
collection PubMed
description Recent theories propose that abstract concepts, compared to concrete ones, might activate to a larger extent interoceptive, social and linguistic experiences. At the same time, recent research has underlined the importance of investigating how different sub-kinds of abstract concepts are represented. We report a pre-registered experiment, preceded by a pilot study, in which we asked participants to evaluate the difficulty of 3 kinds of concrete concepts (natural objects, tools, and food concepts) and abstract concepts (Philosophical and Spiritual concepts, PS, Physical Space Time and Quantity concepts, PSTQ, and Emotional, Mental State and Social concepts, EMSS). While rating the words, participants were assigned to different conditions designed to interfere with conceptual processing: they were required to squeeze a ball (hand motor system activation), to chew gum (mouth motor system activation), to self-estimate their heartbeats (interoception), and to perform a motor articulatory task (inner speech involvement). In a control condition they simply rated the difficulty of words. A possible interference should result in the increase of the difficulty ratings. Bayesian analyses reveal that, compared to concrete ones, abstract concepts are more grounded in interoceptive experience and concrete concepts less in linguistic experience (mouth motor system involvement), and that the experience on which different kinds of abstract and concrete concepts differs widely. For example, within abstract concepts interoception plays a major role for EMSS and PS concepts, while the ball squeezing condition interferes more for PSTQ concepts, confirming that PSTQ are the most concrete among abstract concepts, and tap into sensorimotor manual experience. Implications of the results for current theories of conceptual representation are discussed.
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spelling pubmed-74928122020-09-16 Sensorimotor and interoceptive dimensions in concrete and abstract concepts Villani, Caterina Lugli, Luisa Liuzza, Marco Tullio Nicoletti, Roberto Borghi, Anna M. J Mem Lang Article Recent theories propose that abstract concepts, compared to concrete ones, might activate to a larger extent interoceptive, social and linguistic experiences. At the same time, recent research has underlined the importance of investigating how different sub-kinds of abstract concepts are represented. We report a pre-registered experiment, preceded by a pilot study, in which we asked participants to evaluate the difficulty of 3 kinds of concrete concepts (natural objects, tools, and food concepts) and abstract concepts (Philosophical and Spiritual concepts, PS, Physical Space Time and Quantity concepts, PSTQ, and Emotional, Mental State and Social concepts, EMSS). While rating the words, participants were assigned to different conditions designed to interfere with conceptual processing: they were required to squeeze a ball (hand motor system activation), to chew gum (mouth motor system activation), to self-estimate their heartbeats (interoception), and to perform a motor articulatory task (inner speech involvement). In a control condition they simply rated the difficulty of words. A possible interference should result in the increase of the difficulty ratings. Bayesian analyses reveal that, compared to concrete ones, abstract concepts are more grounded in interoceptive experience and concrete concepts less in linguistic experience (mouth motor system involvement), and that the experience on which different kinds of abstract and concrete concepts differs widely. For example, within abstract concepts interoception plays a major role for EMSS and PS concepts, while the ball squeezing condition interferes more for PSTQ concepts, confirming that PSTQ are the most concrete among abstract concepts, and tap into sensorimotor manual experience. Implications of the results for current theories of conceptual representation are discussed. Elsevier Inc. 2021-02 2020-09-16 /pmc/articles/PMC7492812/ /pubmed/32952286 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2020.104173 Text en © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Villani, Caterina
Lugli, Luisa
Liuzza, Marco Tullio
Nicoletti, Roberto
Borghi, Anna M.
Sensorimotor and interoceptive dimensions in concrete and abstract concepts
title Sensorimotor and interoceptive dimensions in concrete and abstract concepts
title_full Sensorimotor and interoceptive dimensions in concrete and abstract concepts
title_fullStr Sensorimotor and interoceptive dimensions in concrete and abstract concepts
title_full_unstemmed Sensorimotor and interoceptive dimensions in concrete and abstract concepts
title_short Sensorimotor and interoceptive dimensions in concrete and abstract concepts
title_sort sensorimotor and interoceptive dimensions in concrete and abstract concepts
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7492812/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32952286
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2020.104173
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