Does the mind care about whether a word is abstract or concrete? Why concreteness is probably not a natural kind

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Abstract

Many psychologists currently assume that there is a psychologically real distinction to be made between concepts that are abstract and concepts that are concrete. It is for example largely agreed that concepts and words are more easily processed if they are concrete. Moreover, it is assumed that this is becausethese words and concepts are concrete. It is thought that interesting generalizations can be made about certain concepts becausethey are concrete. I argue that we have surprisingly little reason to believe that the abstract‐concrete distinction is psychologically real.

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The mental representation of parity and number magnitude.

Stanislas Dehaene, Serge Bossini, Pascal Giraux (1993)

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Natural speech reveals the semantic maps that tile human cerebral cortex

Alexander Huth, Wendy de Heer, Thomas L Griffiths … (2016)

The meaning of language is represented in regions of the cerebral cortex collectively known as the “semantic system”. However, little of the semantic system has been mapped comprehensively, and the semantic selectivity of most regions is unknown. Here we systematically map semantic selectivity across the cortex using voxel-wise modeling of fMRI data collected while subjects listened to hours of narrative stories. We show that the semantic system is organized into intricate patterns that appear consistent across individuals. We then use a novel generative model to create a detailed semantic atlas. Our results suggest that most areas within the semantic system represent information about specific semantic domains, or groups of related concepts, and our atlas shows which domains are represented in each area. This study demonstrates that data-driven methods—commonplace in studies of human neuroanatomy and functional connectivity—provide a powerful and efficient means for mapping functional representations in the brain.