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![The meaning of abstract words as dynamic. The meaning of abstract words usually changes, sometimes even significantly, during the life span of individuals, as life experiences enrich and accumulate. Consequently, (1) the meaning of concrete words, like “cup” (top), is embodied virtually in the same way all along the individual life span (e.g., in the motor cortex [circle]), whereas (2) the meaning of abstract words, like “freedom” (bottom), comes to be progressively attached to more and more experiences, often emotionally charged, and, therefore, embodied in more and more scattered brain systems. Note the increase in activation (symbolized as the increase in the shaded surfaces) of the represented brain regions, and especially the emotion-related ones. 1: motor cortex; 2: gustatory cortex; 3: olfactory cortex; 4: auditory cortex; 5: somatosensory cortex; 6: visual cortex; 7: emotion-related brain regions](publication/331499726/figure/fig3/AS:960140689829888@1605926787036/The-meaning-of-abstract-words-as-dynamic-The-meaning-of-abstract-words-usually-changes.png)
The meaning of abstract words as dynamic. The meaning of abstract words usually changes, sometimes even significantly, during the life span of individuals, as life experiences enrich and accumulate. Consequently, (1) the meaning of concrete words, like “cup” (top), is embodied virtually in the same way all along the individual life span (e.g., in the motor cortex [circle]), whereas (2) the meaning of abstract words, like “freedom” (bottom), comes to be progressively attached to more and more experiences, often emotionally charged, and, therefore, embodied in more and more scattered brain systems. Note the increase in activation (symbolized as the increase in the shaded surfaces) of the represented brain regions, and especially the emotion-related ones. 1: motor cortex; 2: gustatory cortex; 3: olfactory cortex; 4: auditory cortex; 5: somatosensory cortex; 6: visual cortex; 7: emotion-related brain regions
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This paper addresses the debated issue of abstract language in the framework of embodiment. First, we discuss the notion of abstractness in the light of the Western philosophical thought, with a focus on the English empiricist tradition. Second, we review the most relevant psychological models and neuroscientific empirical findings on abstract lang...
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... Here, we built upon the distinction between concrete (embodied) and abstract (disembodied) concepts handed down from classic embodied theories (e.g., Barsalou, 1999;Pulvermüller, 2005). However, more contemporary theories argue that both concrete and abstract construals are grounded in sensorimotor experience, thereby blurring the abstract-concrete distinction (e.g., Buccino et al., 2019). As an example, a recent investigation by Banks and Connell (2023) concluded that participant-generated exemplars for abstract concepts contained traces of sensorimotor experience. ...
Embodied cognition theories predict a functional involvement of sensorimotor processes in language understanding. In a preregistered experiment, we tested this idea by investigating whether interfering with primary motor cortex (M1) activation can change how people construe meaning from action language. Participants were presented with sentences describing actions (e.g., "turning off the light”) and asked to choose between two interpretations of their meaning, one more concrete (e.g., "flipping a switch") and another more abstract (e.g., "going to sleep"). Prior to this task, participants’ M1 was disrupted using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). The results yielded strong evidence against the idea that M1-rTMS affects meaning construction (BF01 > 30). Additional analyses and control experiments suggest that the absence of effect cannot be accounted for by failure to inhibit M1, lack of construct validity of the task, or lack of power to detect a small effect. In sum, these results do not support a causal role for primary motor cortex in building meaning from action language.
... Several concerns can be raised regarding the interpretation of the present null result. A first concern is the possibility that primary motor cortex is implied in representing the meaning of both concrete and abstract concepts (e.g., see Buccino et al., 2019). Indeed, there 27 exist some neurophysiological (e.g., Glenberg et al., 2008a) and neuroimaging (e.g., Sakreida et al., 2013) studies supporting this idea. ...
Embodied cognition theories predict a functional involvement of sensorimotor processes in language understanding. In a preregistered experiment, we tested this idea by investigating whether interfering with primary motor cortex (M1) activation can change how people construe meaning from action language. Participants were presented with sentences describing actions (e.g., "turning off the light") and asked to choose between two interpretations of their meaning, one more concrete (e.g., "flipping a switch") and another more abstract (e.g., "going to sleep"). Prior to this task, participants' M1 was disrupted using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). The results yielded strong evidence against the idea that M1-rTMS affects meaning construction (BF01 > 30). Additional analyses and control experiments suggest that the absence of effect cannot be accounted for by failure to inhibit M1, lack of construct validity of the task, or lack of power to detect a small effect. In sum, these results do not support a causal role for primary motor cortex in building meaning from action language.
... For example, words ending in '-ling' (eg: earthling) denote an individual (relatively concrete), while '-hood' (eg: childhood) denotes a condition (relatively abstract) [1]. Buccino et al [26] propose that concreteness is associated with complexity in that concrete words are linked to less complex experience than abstract words. That is, while both types of words are linked to experience, the experiences associated with abstract words are more complex than experiences associated with concrete words. ...
Word complexity is defined in a number of different ways. Psycholinguistic, morphological and lexical proxies are often used. Human ratings are also used. The problem here is that these proxies do not measure complexity directly, and human ratings are susceptible to subjective bias. In this study we contend that some form of 'latent complexity' can be approximated by using samples of simple and complex words. We use a sample of 'simple' words from primary school picture books and a sample of 'complex' words from high school and academic settings. In order to analyse the differences between these classes, we look at the letter positional probabilities (LPPs). We find strong statistical associations between several LPPs and complexity. For example, simple words are significantly (p<.001) more likely to start with w, b, s, h, g, k, j, t, y or f, while complex words are significantly (p<.001) more likely to start with i, a, e, r, v, u or d. We find similar strong associations for subsequent letter positions, with 84 letter-position variables in the first 6 positions being significant at the p<.001 level. We then use LPPs as variables in creating a classifier which can classify the two classes with an 83% accuracy. We test these findings using a second data set, with 66 LPPs significant (p<.001) in the first 6 positions common to both datasets. We use these 66 variables to create a classifier that is able to classify a third dataset with an accuracy of 70%. Finally, we create a fourth sample by combining the extreme high and low scoring words generated by three classifiers built on the first three separate datasets and use this sample to build a classifier which has an accuracy of 97%. We use this to score the four levels of English word groups from an ESL program.
... experientially complex abstract concepts (Buccino et al., 2019). Indeed, analyzed age-of-acquisition (AoA) ratings and confirmed that abstract words are, on average, acquired later than concrete words. ...
... Indeed, Barsalou et al. (2018) argued that the concreteness of a word is not a fixed quantity, and can vary across different uses or contexts (see also Borghi et al., 2017). Buccino et al. (2019) suggested that abstract concepts may require more complex experiences that come later in life. ...
Extensive research has shown that children’s early words are learned through sensorimotor experience. Thus, early-acquired words tend to have more concrete meanings. Abstract word meanings tend to be learned later but less is known about their acquisition. We collected meaning-specific concreteness ratings and examined their relationship with age-of-acquisition data from large-scale vocabulary testing with children in grade 2 to college age. Earlier-acquired meanings were rated as more concrete while later-acquired meanings as more abstract, particularly for words typically considered to be concrete. The results suggest that sensorimotor experiences are important to early-acquired word meanings, and other experiences (e.g., linguistic) are important to later-acquired meanings, consistent with a multi-representational view of lexical semantics.
... As noted earlier, an interesting development in neuropsychological studies is evidence that abstract words also can be associated with sensorimotor and multimodal areas of the brain such that some abstract words may be understood as if they were concrete. For example, the relatively abstract word freedom might activate sensorimotor brain areas associated with mobility (i.e., spatial fluidity; the freedom to move about) as well as affective states associated with that mobility (Buccino et al., 2019;Del Maschio, et al., 2022;Kiefer & Pulvermüller, 2012;Yao et al., 2018). The same would apply to other word classes such as spatial, temporal, and directional prepositions (e.g., above suspicion, at last, behind the curve), and deictic "pointing" words (e.g., this, that, there). ...
... When enough such situations are encountered by the learner, a subliminal general response to a word is induced that is further refined by present context. This is just what is suggested by some theories of embodied cognition (e.g., Buccino et al., 2019;Glenberg & Gallese, 2012;Lakoff & Johnson, 1999;Paivio, 2007;Sadoski, 2018;Sadoski & Paivio, 2013). ...
This article reviews the embodied theoretical basis for the meaningful learning of abstract vocabulary and reviews selected educational programs that are theoretically based and have both success and promise for abstract vocabulary development. Abstract vocabulary is a mainstay of academic vocabulary, but its nature and educational development are not well understood. From the perspective of embodied cognition and neuropsychology, the meaning and development of abstract words are based on nonverbal sensory, sensorimotor, and affective evocations as elaborated by verbal contextual associations both abstract and concrete. Developmental psychometric studies suggest a mutual relationship between nonverbal reasoning and increasingly abstract vocabulary that is a basis of the developing intellect. Although abstract vocabulary is typically learned through exposure to rich oral language and wide reading, direct instruction is also vital for many students. Educational interventions consistent with this nonverbal-verbal embodied theoretical account have been shown to be effective in learning academic vocabulary in general and abstract vocabulary in particular. However, more research is needed in both theory and practice.
... (Locke 1690, Book III, Ch. 1, n. 2, emphasis added) Worth noting the use of the expression "internal conception" -the very same one used by Frege two centuries later. Now, in line with the insights drawn from Locke's Essay, a recent review (Buccino et al. 2019), addresses the issue of embodied abstract language under the assumption that abstract contents are not such because they are independent of experience but because the experience they refer to is more complex. Accordingly, the concrete/abstract dichotomy may no longer be understood in a yes/no fashion but in terms of a continuum of degrees of complexity of the attached experiences. ...
... This may also depend on the fact that it is much more difficult to ascertain the neural substrates re-enacted by abstract words when they have to do with highly complex and varied experiences. However, some studies report data suggesting that processing of abstract contents is not sharply distinguished from processing of concrete ones in the brain (see Buccino et al. 2019 for review). The point is also strengthened by a very recent meta-analysis of brain-imaging studies of activations related to both abstract and concrete language (Del Maschio et al. 2021) showing the processing of abstract expressions to be not sharply distinguished, in the brain, from the processing of concrete ones. ...
... Indeed, both kinds of language engage the same widespread set of clusters in the left temporal lobe (including the middle and inferior temporal gyri), in the left motor cortex, as well as in right parietal cortex, left inferior frontal gyrus, and prefrontal regions -all areas involved in the subjects' interaction with the world. These results are in keeping with the above sketched embodied model for abstract language processing (Buccino et al. 2019). The meta-analysis by Del Maschio and colleagues (2021) also unveils clusters more active for abstract than concrete language: the left inferior frontal gyrus (pars triangularis and orbitalis, largely overlapping Broca's region) and middle temporal gyrus, as well as smaller clusters in medial frontal cortex and bilateral temporal poles. ...
Jesus of Nazareth used parables to convey religious concepts with an unparalleled mastery of everyday experience. These "examples" were pedagogical tools for communicating moral and religious content in a concrete manner. However, evaluating this concreteness requires consideration of recent developments in embodiment neuroscience concerning how language acquires meaning and conveys content. This paper employs these neuroscientific developments to explore the concreteness of Jesus' language, and shows how the perspective of embodied language aligns with the three levels of concreteness identified in the parables' narrative.
... Interestingly, recent empirical results (Del Maschio et al. 2021) and theoretical frameworks (Buccino et al. 2019;Buccino and Colagè 2022) suggest that also the meaning of more abstract words/concepts may be grounded in the speakers' concrete experiences. This might seem counter-intuitive if «abstractness» is understood as something far, disjoined and detached from concrete experiences. ...
... This might seem counter-intuitive if «abstractness» is understood as something far, disjoined and detached from concrete experiences. However, the idea behind this proposal is that abstract words/concepts are not far (or farther) from experience than concrete ones, but that they refer to more complex and varied experiences (Buccino et al. 2019). Thus, speakers talking about «abstract» contents understand each other to the extent to which they have common and shared concrete experiences attached to the words labelling those abstract contents (see also . ...
Embodied cognition shows that language understanding and production are inseparable from speakers’ bodily experience. Twentieth-century philosophy has been largely suspicious of rooting linguistic meaning in speakers’ experience, understood as strictly private and individual. Grounding language into (subjective) experience would lead to the risk of incommunicability, at the basis of Wittgenstein’s well-known argument against «private language». The turn would be in conceiving of experience as non-private. The history of philosophy, namely of aesthetics, indeed offers a «precursor» of such a conception (and hence, of embodied cognition): Kant’s sensus communis. The notion lends valuable insights for the relevant philosophical questions embodied cognition utterly faces
... This theory argues against a causative explanation from the right hemisphere as there are no obviously distinct processing systems for the two types of words. More recently, the theories of "embodied language" have proposed a neural mechanism subserving the human concepts that are grounded in sensory, motor, social or emotional experiences (Buccino et al. 2019; Barsalou et al. 2008;Borghi et al. 2011;Wilson-Mendenhall et al. 2013). Adequate empirical evidence has been found to testify the embodiment of concrete words (Kiefer and Pulvermüller 2012), but abstract words pose a challenge due to their lack of physical and identifiable referents (Connell and Lynott 2012;Guan et al. 2013). ...
... Weakly embodied theories, such as Affective Embodiment Account and Words as Social Tools, acknowledge that concepts could be embodied in the experiences of action and perception as well as emotion, introspection and situation, and highlight that abstract words are also embodied in linguistic information which is symbolic to access to concepts (Vigliocco et al. 2014;Borghi et al. 2019; Barsalou and Wiemer-Hastings 2005). Strongly embodied theories claim that both abstract and concrete concepts were sub-served by the same mechanisms, and the difference lies in the complexity of the underlying grounding (Glenberg et al. 2008;Buccino et al. 2019), and abstract meaning is effector-unspecific, multi-systemic and dynamic in terms of neural mechanism (Buccino et al. 2019). ...
... Weakly embodied theories, such as Affective Embodiment Account and Words as Social Tools, acknowledge that concepts could be embodied in the experiences of action and perception as well as emotion, introspection and situation, and highlight that abstract words are also embodied in linguistic information which is symbolic to access to concepts (Vigliocco et al. 2014;Borghi et al. 2019; Barsalou and Wiemer-Hastings 2005). Strongly embodied theories claim that both abstract and concrete concepts were sub-served by the same mechanisms, and the difference lies in the complexity of the underlying grounding (Glenberg et al. 2008;Buccino et al. 2019), and abstract meaning is effector-unspecific, multi-systemic and dynamic in terms of neural mechanism (Buccino et al. 2019). ...
The concreteness effect refers to the advantage in speed and accuracy of processing concrete words over abstract words. Previous studies have shown that the processing of the two types of words is mediated by distinct neural mechanisms, but these studies were mainly conducted with task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging. This study investigates the associations between the concreteness effect and grey matter volume (GMV) of brain regions as well as resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) of these identified regions. The results show that the GMV of left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), right middle temporal gyrus (MTG), right supplementary motor area and right anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) negatively correlates with the concreteness effect. The rsFC of the left IFG, the right MTG and the right ACC with the nodes, mainly in default mode network, frontoparietal network and dorsal attention network positively correlates with the concreteness effect. The GMV and rsFC jointly and respectively predict the concreteness effect in individuals. In conclusion, stronger connectivity amongst functional networks and higher coherent engagement of the right hemisphere predict a greater difference in the verbal memory of abstract and concrete words.
... Besides, when abstract concepts are concerned, social skills contribute to language communication, enabling individuals to assess the person they are dealing with, inferring and/or modulating the subtle nuances of meaning that may better suit his/her status. Indeed, the same concept can acquire different meanings based on the age and experience of the individual using it (e.g., Buccino et al., 2019). Accordingly, it is reasonable to assume that situations that strongly call for social skills and representational abilities may differently interact with the processing of abstract vs. concrete concepts. ...
... Although the concept of abstractness itself still lacks an unambiguous and unitary definition (see for instance Desai et al., 2018;Vargas & Just, 2020;Conca et al., 2021), it remains that compared to concrete concepts, abstract items do present with a more complex pattern of representations in the brain. According to a recent proposal (Buccino et al., 2019), this different degree of functional complexity would depend on the fact that only abstract concepts possess the peculiar characteristics of being: (i) effector-unspecific, i.e., related to different contextual representations (cf. 'freedom', as in 'f. to leave/f. to speak/f. to think', etc.); (ii) multi-systemic, since they simultaneously recruit more than one brain system (other than the sensory-motor one), and (iii) dynamic, because their meaning is susceptible to vary with both time and experience. ...
... 'freedom', as in 'f. to leave/f. to speak/f. to think', etc.); (ii) multi-systemic, since they simultaneously recruit more than one brain system (other than the sensory-motor one), and (iii) dynamic, because their meaning is susceptible to vary with both time and experience. For example, the concept of 'freedom' varies considerably in the framing perspective of an adolescent as opposed to that of an elderly individual (Buccino et al., 2019). The Opponent + High condition was not only socially favorable to the responder but also represented the most effortful situation because participants were called to respond in most of the trials. ...
To better understand the social determinants of conceptual knowledge we devised a task in which participants were asked to judge the match between a definition (expressed in abstract or concrete terms) and a target-word (also either abstract or concrete). The task was presented in the form of a competition that could/could not include an opponent, and in which different percentages of response rounds were assigned to the participant at the experimenter's discretion. Thus, depending on the condition, participants were either exposed to a competitive context mimicking a privileged/unprivileged interaction with the experimenter or to a socially neutral setting. Results showed that manipulation of the social context selectively affected judgments on abstract stimuli: responses were significantly slower whenever a definition and/or a target word were presented in abstract form and when participants were in the favorable condition of responding in most of the trials. Moreover, only when processing abstract material, responses were slower when an opponent was expected to be present. Data are discussed in the frame of the different cognitive engagements involved when treating abstract and concrete concepts as well as in relation to the possible motivational factors prompted by the experimental set-up. The role of social context as a crucial element for abstract knowledge processing is also considered.
... proposed that concrete words may be acquired sooner than more experientially complex abstract 15 concepts (Buccino et al., 2019). Indeed, Ponari, Norbury and Vigliocco (2018) analyzed age-of-acquisition 16 (AoA) ratings and confirmed that abstract words are, on average, acquired later than concrete words. ...
Extensive research has shown that children’s early words are learned through sensorimotor experience. Thus, early-acquired words tend to have more concrete meanings. Abstract word meanings tend to be learned later but less is known about their acquisition. We collected meaning-specific concreteness ratings and examined their relationship with age-of-acquisition. Earlier-acquired meanings were rated as more concrete while later-acquired meanings as more abstract, particularly for words typically considered to be concrete. The results suggest that sensorimotor experiences are important to early-acquired word meanings, and other experiences (e.g., linguistic) are important to later-acquired meanings, consistent with a multi-representational view of lexical semantics.
