Current Perspectives on Abstract Concepts and Future Research Directions

Banks, B., Borghi, A. M., Fargier, R., Fini, C., Jonauskaite, D., Mazzuca, C., Montalti, M., Villani, C., & Woodin, G. (2023). Consensus Paper: Current Perspectives on Abstract Concepts and Future Research Directions. Journal of Cognition, 6(1): 62, pp. 1–26. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/joc.238

Abstract: Abstract concepts are relevant to a wide range of disciplines, including cognitive science, linguistics, psychology, cognitive, social, and affective neuroscience, and philosophy. This consensus paper synthesizes the work and views of researchers in the field, discussing current perspectives on theoretical and methodological issues, and recommendations for future research. In this paper, we urge researchers to go beyond the traditional abstract-concrete dichotomy and consider the multiple dimensions that characterize concepts (e.g., sensorimotor experience, social interaction, conceptual metaphor), as well as the mediating influence of linguistic and cultural context on conceptual representations. We also promote the use of interactive methods to investigate both the comprehension and production of abstract concepts, while also focusing on individual differences in conceptual representations. Overall, we argue that abstract concepts should be studied in a more nuanced way that takes into account their complexity and diversity, which should permit us a fuller, more holistic understanding of abstract cognition.

From the article:

For example, when contrasted with concrete concepts, abstract concepts are typically expressed by words with a later Age of Acquisition, and through linguistic explanations rather than denoting their referents directly (linguistic Modality of Acquisition; Wauters et al., 2003). They also tend to be less imageable, have lower Body Object Interaction scores (BOI: Tillotson et al., 2008; Pexman et al., 2019), and be less easily linked to specific contexts (contextual availability; Schwanenflugel & Stowe, 1989). Abstract concepts are also more variable across participants and cultures (Wang & Bi, 2021) and are generally less iconic (Lupyan & Winter, 2018) than concrete concepts.

Later:

The multidimensional nature of abstract concepts means that defining them purely based on whether they are perceivable or not (i.e., as concrete or abstract) fails to capture their complexity (e.g., Barsalou, Dutriaux & Scheepers, 2018; Borghi et al., 2017), and indeed can even be misleading. Banks and Connell (2022) used the Brysbaert et al. (2014) concreteness ratings to analyze the structure of semantic categories collected in a category production (semantic fluency) task, examining the concreteness of the concepts that comprise ostensibly concrete (e.g., animal, furniture) and abstract (e.g., science, unit of time) categories. Although members of concrete categories overall were more highly rated on concreteness, many (e.g., metal: silver, hat: beret) unexpectedly had similarly high concreteness ratings to more abstract category members (e.g., profession: lawyer, social relationship: teammate). Indeed, certain abstract concepts such as beauty or fitness have been associated with sensory and motor areas of the brain (temporo-occipital visual and fronto-parietal motor areas, respectively; Harpainter et al., 2020). Furthermore, when sensorimotor experience is measured via multiple individual modalities (e.g., Lynott et al., 2020; Speed & Brysbaert, 2021; Vergallito et al., 2020), the concrete-abstract distinction becomes even less clear. When the verbally-produced category members from Banks and Connell (2022) were analyzed based on their grounding in multiple perceptual modalities (vision, hearing, touch, smell, taste, interoception) and actions involving specific parts of the body (the head, hands/arms, feet/legs, torso and mouth) many abstract category members were in fact found to be strongly grounded in sensorimotor experience (e.g. sport, social gathering, art form; Banks & Connell, 2021) – that is, the concrete-abstract distinction was much less apparent.

Comment: I note, as an extreme example, that sodium chloride is a concrete physical substance, but the concept is abstract, as opposed to the concept, salt, which is concrete. Less, extreme, animals are all physical things, but the concept, animal, seems to be abstractly defined, the same with plant. Try to produce compact physical descriptions that encompass all plants or all animals. It is between difficult and impossible. What all animals seem to have in common are the roles they can play with respect to verbs such as see, hear, smell, run, jump, eat, and so forth, in contrast to plants and mere physical objects. Similarly, plants can live, grow, and die, while physical objects cannot. And then we have terms such as chair and table, which seem best defined in terms of their affordances for people rather than their physical characteristics, which can vary widely.

The article continues with some more discussion and offers this: "many theories have also argued that our understanding and representation of abstract concepts relies more on language than the sensorimotor dimension, and particularly linguistic distributional relations (e.g., Borghi, 2020; Crutch & Warrington, 2005; Dove et al., 2020; Vigliocco et al., 2009)."

And so forth. An interesting and useful piece of work.