ArticleFrontiers in psychology2018
The Semantic Content of Abstract Concepts: A Property Listing Study of 296 Abstract Words.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 42 papers.
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Who cites it
42 citing papers in PubMed.
- Embodied Effects in Verb Processing and Learning: A Three-Level Meta-Analysis.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Differences in the Semantic Content of Abstract and Concrete Words: Evidence from a Linguistic Feature Analysis.Journal of psycholinguistic research · 2026Article
- When knowledge interferes with perception: Neural mechanisms of the semantic amplification of visual false memory.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Emotional and Social Dimension of Abstract Concepts Meet with Interoception in Right Anterior Insula.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Indirect experiential grounding: semantic similarity of abstract scientific concepts is reflected in activity patterns in visual and motor cortex.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Contrasting the organization of concrete and abstract word meanings.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2025Article
- Cognition ratings for 8826 english words.Behavior research methods · 2025Article
- Quantifying the Multidimensionality of Abstract Concepts: An Italian Database.Brain sciences · 2025Article
- The Flexible Role of Social Experience in the Processing of Abstract Concepts.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Grounded cognition and the representation of momentum: abstract concepts modulate mislocalization.Psychological research · 2025Article
- Spatio-temporal activity of brain electrical sources during processing of abstract social concepts.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2025Article
- Grounding of abstract concepts related to power.Memory & cognition · 2025Article
- Article
- A Brief Description of How Teachers Experience An Infographic Loneliness Toolkit About Supporting Adolescents to Overcome Loneliness.Clinical child psychology and psychiatry · 2024Article
- Abstract concepts and simulated competition.Psychological research · 2024Article
- Impaired social concept processing in persons with autistic-like traits.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Social concepts and the cerebellum: behavioural and functional connectivity signatures in cerebellar ataxic patients.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Social semantics: the organization and grounding of abstract concepts.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Concepts, abstractness and inner speech.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Quantifying social semantics: An inclusive definition of socialness and ratings for 8388 English words.Behavior research methods · 2023Article
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3 authors.
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Abstract
The relation of abstract concepts to the modality-specific systems is discussed controversially. According to classical approaches, the semantic content of abstract concepts can only be coded by amodal or verbal-symbolic representations distinct from the sensory and motor systems, because abstract concepts lack a clear physical referent. Grounded cognition theories, in contrast, propose that abstract concepts do not depend only on the verbal system, but also on a variety of modal systems involving perception, action, emotion and internal states. In order to contribute to this debate, we investigated the semantic content of abstract concepts using a property generation task. Participants were asked to generate properties for 296 abstract concepts, which are relevant for constituting their meaning. These properties were categorized by a coding-scheme making a classification into modality-specific and verbal contents possible. Words were additionally rated with regard to concreteness/abstractness and familiarity. To identify possible subgroups of abstract concepts with distinct profiles of generated features, hierarchical cluster analyses were conducted. Participants generated a substantial proportion of introspective, affective, social, sensory and motor-related properties, in addition to verbal associations. Cluster analyses revealed different subcategories of abstract concepts, which can be characterized by the dominance of certain conceptual features. The present results are therefore compatible with grounded cognition theories, which emphasize the importance of linguistic, social, introspective and affective experiential information for the representation of abstract concepts. Our findings also indicate that abstract concepts are highly heterogeneous requiring the investigation of well-specified subcategories of abstract concepts, for instance as revealed by the present cluster analyses. The present study could thus guide future behavioral or imaging work further elucidating the representation of abstract concepts.
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