Spatial Meaning Congruity Effect with Abstract and Concrete Words Michele Burigo & Maria Luisa Lorusso Scientific Institute “E. Medea”, Bosisio Parini, Italy

Introduction An interesting question is how people can think about things they have never seen, which is the case of abstract concepts. There is a growing body of evidence showing that people process abstract concepts through conceptual metaphors based on a more experience-based domain (Boroditsky, 2002; Gibbs, 2006; Lakoff, 1992) such as the concrete domain. Similarly, the Embodiment Theory claims that abstract knowledge is bounded to body experience and abstract concepts are understood through image schemas and motor schema (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). In a recent study, Casasanto & Lozano (2008) showed that people read text more fluently when abstract concepts with a metaphorical spatial denotation such as temperature, grades, price, etc., are associated to congruent arm movements (e.g., upward vs. downward motion). This motor-meaning congruity effect suggests that abstract concepts depend, in part, on mental representations built up through perceptual-motor interactions with the physical world. Similar interactions were found between the horizontal/vertical nature of verb-related image schemas (e.g., horizontal image schema to push, and a vertical image schema to respect) and the position of visual stimuli, providing support for the perceptual-motor character of abstract concept representation (Richardson, Spivey, Barsalou & McRae, 2003). According to these views, abstract domains of knowledge are grounded on an embodied experience derived from sensory-motor activity and are used as a substrate to represent abstract concepts. The present study aims to investigate whether the perceptual-motor component of abstract concepts emerges also with a simple perceptual discrimination task where no explicit movements are required. Therefore an experiment was run which did not require congruent/incongruent motor responses whilst it was still able to capture whether abstract entities that have no spatial instantiation in the world, are associated with an embodied representation. Hypothesis According to the Embodiment hypothesis concepts are largely determined by the form of the human body and shaped by its interaction (physical and perceptual) with the environment. For concrete entities this can be intuitively correct given that our bodies interact with them, but it might not be so straightforward for abstract concepts. Thus, if it is true that abstract concepts are mediated by embodied processes a spatial meaning congruity effect should be found for both concrete and abstract concepts. In particular, we expect that congruent trials, i.e. trials where the covert direction of the prime matches the direction of the target, should be processed faster than incongruent trials (trials showing a prime with a neutral or opposite direction to the target). Method A total of 26 volunteers (6 males, 20 females; mean age = 21.8) participated in a semantic priming experiment. The prime could be a concrete word or an abstract word with a covert directional denotation: up (i.e., hero, eagle) down (i.e., sadness, fall) or neutral (i.e., nature, dust). The target was a black arrow that could appear in upward direction or downward direction. Participants were instructed to ignore the prime-word presented at the beginning of the trial and judge whether the arrow was pointing up or down as quick as possible. The sequence of events is illustrated in Figure 1. Presentation times were taken from Ferrand, Humphreys & Segui (1998) and the stimulus

presentation was quasi-randomised in order to control for repetition priming. The spatial denotations of the prime-words were assessed by a control group that had to decide whether these were associated with an up, down or neutral direction. In summary the variables involved in this study were 2 word sets (concrete vs. abstract) X 3 prime directions (up vs. down vs. neutral) X 2 target directions (upward vs. downward) X 5 prime words. Each item was repeated 3 times for a total of 180 items. Results The data analysis focused on correct responses and RTs were filtered in order to eliminate outliers. As a criterion, we pruned the latencies more than 2 standard deviations away from the mean of the experimental condition for that participant. The ANOVA revealed no main effect but a significant interaction between target direction and prime direction (F(2,52) = 3.44, MSE = 3429; p < .05). However, the 3-way interaction was not significant. Given that we were particularly interested in comparing the performance on concrete and abstract words, two separate analyses were conducted. The statistics revealed a significant 2-way interaction between target direction and prime direction only with concrete words (F(2,26) = 5.576, MSE = 267.43; p < .001). No significant effect was found for abstract words. Discussion Previous studies showed evidence that abstract concepts are based on an embodied knowledge (mediated by conceptual metaphors and image schemas) based on experimental paradigms that required explicit motor actions. This experiment investigated whether the embodied components of abstract concepts emerges with a simple perceptual discrimination task where no explicit movements are required. The results show that only concrete words generated a significant priming effect (spatial meaning congruity effect), suggesting that the directional information contained in the abstract words are weaker than those associated to concrete words and insufficient to produce a priming effect. Thus, no further evidence is provided that abstract concepts possess directional components derived from embodied knowledge.

References Boroditsky, L. & Ramscar, M. (2002). The Roles of Body and Mind in Abstract Thought. Psychological Science, 13, 185-188. Casasanto & Lozano (2008). The Cognitive Function of Metaphorical Gestures. Ferrand, L., Humphreys, G. W., & Segui, J. (1998). Masked repetition and phonological priming in picture naming. Perception & Psychophysics, 60, 263-274 Gibbs, R. W. (2006). Embodiment and Cognitive Science. Cambridge University Press, NY. Lakoff, G. (1992). The contemporary theory of metaphor. In Ortony, Andrew (ed.) Metaphor and Thought (2nd edition), Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Richardson, D., Spivey, M., Barsalou, L. & McRae, K. (2004). Spatial representations activated during real-time comprehension of verbs. Cognitive Science, 27, 767-780.

This work has been funded by the EU Community as part of the NEST Project “ABSTRACT”.

FIGURE 1

Figure 2 Concrete Words 410

Upward Arrow 400

Downward Arrow

390

RTs

380 370 360 350 340 Down

Neutral Prime Direction

Up