Troche, J;
Crutch, SJ;
Reilly, J;
(2017)
Defining a Conceptual Topography of Word Concreteness: Clustering Properties of Emotion, Sensation, and Magnitude among 750 English Words.
Frontiers in Psychology
, 8
, Article 1787. 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01787.
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Abstract
Cognitive science has a longstanding interest in the ways that people acquire and use abstract vs. concrete words (e.g., truth vs. piano). One dominant theory holds that abstract and concrete words are subserved by two parallel semantic systems. We recently proposed an alternative account of abstract-concrete word representation premised upon a unitary, high dimensional semantic space wherein word meaning is nested. We hypothesize that a range of cognitive and perceptual dimensions (e.g., emotion, time, space, color, size, visual form) bound this space, forming a conceptual topography. Here we report a normative study where we examined the clustering properties of a sample of English words (N = 750) spanning a spectrum of concreteness in a continuous manner from highly abstract to highly concrete. Participants (N = 328) rated each target word on a range of 14 cognitive dimensions (e.g., color, emotion, valence, polarity, motion, space). The dimensions reduced to three factors: Endogenous factor, Exogenous factor, and Magnitude factor. Concepts were plotted in a unified, multimodal space with concrete and abstract concepts along a continuous continuum. We discuss theoretical implications and practical applications of this dataset. These word norms are freely available for download and use at http://www.reilly-coglab.com/data/.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Defining a Conceptual Topography of Word Concreteness: Clustering Properties of Emotion, Sensation, and Magnitude among 750 English Words |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01787 |
| Publisher version: | http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01787 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2017 Troche, Crutch and Reilly. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
| Keywords: | Social Sciences, Psychology, Multidisciplinary, Psychology, word concreteness effect, semantic memory, concrete-abstract, lexical-semantic, multidimensional scaling, DUAL CODING THEORY, OBJECT RECOGNITION, SEMANTIC DEMENTIA, ABSTRACT WORDS, PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE, CONTEXT AVAILABILITY, AUDITORY-STIMULI, TIME PERCEPTION, OLFACTORY-BULB, DEEP DYSPHASIA |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology > Neurodegenerative Diseases |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10039896 |
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