ArticleJournal of cognition2020
A Future of Words: Language and the Challenge of Abstract Concepts.
Article in Journal of cognition, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers.
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Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed.
- The impact of social interaction on abstract concepts.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Article
- Ctrl + Alt + Inner Speech: A Verbal-Cognitive Scaffold (VCS) Model of Pathways to Computational Thinking.Journal of Intelligence · 2025Article
- Similar does not mean the same: ERP correlates of mental and physical experiencer verb processing in Malayalam complex constructions.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
- Divisive negative discourse biases social experience: a live experiment at a massive public event.Humanities & social sciences communications · 2025Article
- Invariant representations in abstract concept grounding - the physical world in grounded cognition.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2024Review
- Concreteness ratings for 36,000 Estonian words.Behavior research methods · 2024Article
- Embodiment and gestural realization of ergative verbs.Psychological research · 2024Article
- Motor strength as a feature of concepts and visual representations.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- The nature and neurobiology of fear and anxiety: State of the science and opportunities for accelerating discovery.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Review
- Rethinking the role of language in embodied cognition.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Editorial concepts in interaction: social engagement and inner experiences.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Concepts, abstractness and inner speech.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Consensus Paper: Current Perspectives on Abstract Concepts and Future Research Directions.Journal of cognition · 2023Article
- Distributed embodiment of metaphoricalFrontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Novel participant-level meta-analytic evidence for AbSANT efficacy.Frontiers in rehabilitation sciences · 2023Article
- Abstract concepts: external influences, internal constraints, and methodological issues.Psychological research · 2022Review
- Is justice grounded? How expertise shapes conceptual representation of institutional concepts.Psychological research · 2022Article
- Abstract and concrete concepts in conversation.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Restricting movements of lower face leaves recognition of emotional vocalizations intact but introduces a valence positivity bias.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- The categorical use of a continuous time representation.Psychological research · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
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Abstract
The paper outlines one of the most important challenges that embodied and grounded theories need to face, i.e., that to explain how abstract concepts (abstractness) are acquired, represented, and used. I illustrate the view according to which abstract concepts are grounded not only in sensorimotor experiences, like concrete concepts, but also and to a greater extent in linguistic, social, and inner experiences. Specifically, I discuss the role played by metacognition, inner speech, social metacognition, and interoception. I also present evidence showing that the weight of linguistic, social, and inner experiences varies depending on the considered sub-kind of abstract concepts (e.g., mental states and spiritual concepts, numbers, emotions, social concepts). I argue that the challenge to explain abstract concepts representation implies the recognition of: a. the role of language, intended as inner and social tool, in shaping our mind; b. the importance of differences across languages; c. the existence of different kinds of abstract concepts; d. the necessity to adopt new paradigms, able to capture the use of abstract concepts in context and interactive situations. This challenge should be addressed with an integrated approach that bridges developmental, anthropological, and neuroscientific studies. This approach extends embodied and grounded views incorporating insights from distributional statistics views of meaning, from pragmatics and semiotics.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.