scholarly journals Modelling concrete and abstract concepts using brain-constrained deep neural networks

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malte R. Henningsen-Schomers ◽  
Friedemann Pulvermüller
Keyword(s):  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Semantic Representation ◽  
Family Resemblance ◽  
Semantic Feature ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Strongly Connected ◽  
Feature Sharing ◽  
Abstract Words ◽  
Feature Overlap ◽  
Concrete Concepts

AbstractA neurobiologically constrained deep neural network mimicking cortical areas relevant for sensorimotor, linguistic and conceptual processing was used to investigate the putative biological mechanisms underlying conceptual category formation and semantic feature extraction. Networks were trained to learn neural patterns representing specific objects and actions relevant to semantically ‘ground’ concrete and abstract concepts. Grounding sets consisted of three grounding patterns with neurons representing specific perceptual or action-related features; neurons were either unique to one pattern or shared between patterns of the same set. Concrete categories were modelled as pattern triplets overlapping in their ‘shared neurons’, thus implementing semantic feature sharing of all instances of a category. In contrast, abstract concepts had partially shared feature neurons common to only pairs of category instances, thus, exhibiting family resemblance, but lacking full feature overlap. Stimulation with concrete and abstract conceptual patterns and biologically realistic unsupervised learning caused formation of strongly connected cell assemblies (CAs) specific to individual grounding patterns, whose neurons were spread out across all areas of the deep network. After learning, the shared neurons of the instances of concrete concepts were more prominent in central areas when compared with peripheral sensorimotor ones, whereas for abstract concepts the converse pattern of results was observed, with central areas exhibiting relatively fewer neurons shared between pairs of category members. We interpret these results in light of the current knowledge about the relative difficulty children show when learning abstract words. Implications for future neurocomputational modelling experiments as well as neurobiological theories of semantic representation are discussed.

scholarly journals How well do similarity measures predict priming in abstract and concrete concepts?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Montefinese ◽  
Erin Michelle Buchanan ◽  
David Vinson
Keyword(s):  
Word Association ◽  
Semantic Representation ◽  
Similarity Measures ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
Association Strength ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Strategic Processes ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Two Measures ◽  
Concrete Concepts

Models of semantic representation predict that automatic priming is determined by associative and co-occurrence relations (i.e., spreading activation accounts), or to similarity in words' semantic features (i.e., featural models). Although, these three factors are correlated in characterizing semantic representation, they seem to tap different aspects of meaning. We designed two lexical decision experiments to dissociate these three different types of meaning similarity. For unmasked primes, we observed priming only due to association strength and not the other two measures; and no evidence for differences in priming for concrete and abstract concepts. For masked primes there was no priming regardless of the semantic relation. These results challenge theoretical accounts of automatic priming. Rather, they are in line with the idea that priming may be due to participants’ controlled strategic processes. These results provide important insight about the nature of priming and how association strength, as determined from word-association norms, relates to the nature of semantic representation.

EXPRESS: Articulatory suppression delays processing of abstract words: the role of inner speech

2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182110536
Author(s):  
Chiara Fini ◽  
Gian Daniele Zannino ◽  
Matteo Orsoni ◽  
Giovanni Augusto Carlesimo ◽  
Mariagrazia Benassi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Articulatory Suppression ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Inner Speech ◽  
Dominant Hand ◽  
Conceptual Representation ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Single Object ◽  
Abstract Words ◽  
Concrete Concepts

Compared to concrete concepts, like “book”, abstract concepts expressed by words like “justice” are more detached from sensorial experiences, even though they are also grounded in sensorial modalities. Abstract concepts lack a single object as referent and are characterized by higher variability both within and across participants. According to the Word as Social Tool (WAT) proposal, owing to their complexity, abstract concepts need to be processed with the help of inner language. Inner language can namely help participants to re-explain to themselves the meaning of the word, to keep information active in working memory, and to prepare themselves to ask information from more competent people. While previous studies have demonstrated that the mouth is involved during abstract concepts’ processing, both the functional role and the mechanisms underlying this involvement still need to be clarified. We report an experiment in which participants were required to evaluate whether 78 words were abstract or concrete by pressing two different pedals. During the judgment task, they were submitted, in different blocks, to a baseline, an articulatory suppression, and a manipulation condition. In the last two conditions, they had to repeat a syllable continually and to manipulate a softball with their dominant hand. Results showed that articulatory suppression slowed down the processing of abstract more than that of concrete words. Overall results confirm the WAT proposal’s hypothesis that abstract concepts processing involves the mouth motor system and specifically inner speech. We discuss the implications for current theories of conceptual representation.

scholarly journals Abstract, emotional and concrete concepts and the activation of mouth-hand effectors.

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Mazzuca ◽  
Luisa Lugli ◽  
Roberto Nicoletti ◽  
Anna M Borghi
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Emotional Words ◽  
Processing Level ◽  
Concreteness Effect ◽  
Abstract Words ◽  
Concrete Concepts ◽  
Emotional Concepts

According to embodied and grounded theories concepts are grounded in sensorimotor systems. The majority of evidence supporting these views concerns concepts referring to objects or actions, while evidence on abstract concepts is more scarce. Explaining how abstract concepts, as “freedom”, are represented, would however be pivotal for grounded theories. According to some recent proposals, abstract concepts are grounded evoking both sensorimotor and linguistic experience, thus activating the mouth motor system more than concrete concepts. Two experiments are reported, aimed at verifying whether abstract, concrete and emotional words activate the mouth and hand effectors. In both experiments participants performed first a lexical decision, then a recognition task. In Experiment 1 participants responded by pressing a button either with the mouth or with the hand, in Experiment 2 responses were given with the foot, while a button held either in the mouth or in the hand was used to respond to catch-trials. Abstract words were slower to process in both tasks (concreteness effect). Across the tasks and experiments, emotional concepts had instead a fluctuating pattern, different from those of both concrete and abstract concepts, suggesting that they cannot be considered as a subset of abstract concepts. The interaction between kind of concept (abstract, concrete and emotional) and effector (mouth, hand) was not significant in the lexical decision task, likely because it emerged only with tasks implying a deeper processing level. It reached significance, instead, in the accuracy analyses of the recognition tasks. In both experiments abstract concepts yielded less errors in the mouth than in the hand condition, supporting our main prediction. Emotional concepts had instead a more variable pattern. Overall, our findings indicate that different kinds of concepts differently activate the mouth and hand effectors, but they also suggests that concepts activate effectors in a flexible and task-dependent way.

Neural Correlates of Concreteness in Semantic Categorization

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (8) ◽  
pp. 1407-1419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penny M. Pexman ◽  
Ian S. Hargreaves ◽  
Jodi D. Edwards ◽  
Luke C. Henry ◽  
Bradley G. Goodyear
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Representation ◽  
Dual Coding ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
Symbol Systems ◽  
Semantic Categorization ◽  
Context Availability ◽  
Abstract Words ◽  
Perceptual Symbol Systems

In some contexts, concrete words (CARROT) are recognized and remembered more readily than abstract words (TRUTH). This concreteness effect has historically been explained by two theories of semantic representation: dual-coding [Paivio, A. Dual coding theory: Retrospect and current status. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 45, 255–287, 1991] and context-availability [Schwanenflugel, P. J. Why are abstract concepts hard to understand? In P. J. Schwanenflugel (Ed.), The psychology of word meanings (pp. 223–250). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1991]. Past efforts to adjudicate between these theories using functional magnetic resonance imaging have produced mixed results. Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, we reexamined this issue with a semantic categorization task that allowed for uniform semantic judgments of concrete and abstract words. The participants were 20 healthy adults. Functional analyses contrasted activation associated with concrete and abstract meanings of ambiguous and unambiguous words. Results showed that for both ambiguous and unambiguous words, abstract meanings were associated with more widespread cortical activation than concrete meanings in numerous regions associated with semantic processing, including temporal, parietal, and frontal cortices. These results are inconsistent with both dual-coding and context-availability theories, as these theories propose that the representations of abstract concepts are relatively impoverished. Our results suggest, instead, that semantic retrieval of abstract concepts involves a network of association areas. We argue that this finding is compatible with a theory of semantic representation such as Barsalou's [Barsalou, L. W. Perceptual symbol systems. Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 22, 577–660, 1999] perceptual symbol systems, whereby concrete and abstract concepts are represented by similar mechanisms but with differences in focal content.

scholarly journals Incorporating Concreteness in Multi-Modal Language Models with Curriculum Learning

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (17) ◽  
pp. 8241
Author(s):  
Erhan Sezerer ◽  
Selma Tekir
Keyword(s):  
Visual Information ◽  
Language Modeling ◽  
Language Models ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Modal Language ◽  
Training Approach ◽  
Proposed Model ◽  
Abstract Words ◽  
Concrete Concepts ◽  
Modeling Representation

Over the last few years, there has been an increase in the studies that consider experiential (visual) information by building multi-modal language models and representations. It is shown by several studies that language acquisition in humans starts with learning concrete concepts through images and then continues with learning abstract ideas through the text. In this work, the curriculum learning method is used to teach the model concrete/abstract concepts through images and their corresponding captions to accomplish multi-modal language modeling/representation. We use the BERT and Resnet-152 models on each modality and combine them using attentive pooling to perform pre-training on the newly constructed dataset, which is collected from the Wikimedia Commons based on concrete/abstract words. To show the performance of the proposed model, downstream tasks and ablation studies are performed. The contribution of this work is two-fold: A new dataset is constructed from Wikimedia Commons based on concrete/abstract words, and a new multi-modal pre-training approach based on curriculum learning is proposed. The results show that the proposed multi-modal pre-training approach contributes to the success of the model.

scholarly journals From Affordances to Abstract Words: The Flexibility of Sensorimotor Grounding

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 1304
Author(s):  
Claudia Mazzuca ◽  
Chiara Fini ◽  
Arthur Henri Michalland ◽  
Ilenia Falcinelli ◽  
Federico Da Rold ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Critical Role ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Sensorimotor System ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Word Use ◽  
Linguistic System ◽  
Abstract Words ◽  
Concrete Concepts ◽  
Sensorimotor Mechanisms ◽  
Object Interactions

The sensorimotor system plays a critical role in several cognitive processes. Here, we review recent studies documenting this interplay at different levels. First, we concentrate on studies that have shown how the sensorimotor system is flexibly involved in interactions with objects. We report evidence demonstrating how social context and situations influence affordance activation, and then focus on tactile and kinesthetic components in body–object interactions. Then, we turn to word use, and review studies that have shown that not only concrete words, but also abstract words are grounded in the sensorimotor system. We report evidence that abstract concepts activate the mouth effector more than concrete concepts, and discuss this effect in light of studies on adults, children, and infants. Finally, we pinpoint possible sensorimotor mechanisms at play in the acquisition and use of abstract concepts. Overall, we show that the involvement of the sensorimotor system is flexibly modulated by context, and that its role can be integrated and flanked by that of other systems such as the linguistic system. We suggest that to unravel the role of the sensorimotor system in cognition, future research should fully explore the complexity of this intricate, and sometimes slippery, relation.

scholarly journals Learning and Using Abstract Words: Evidence from Clinical Populations

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Luisa Lorusso ◽  
Michele Burigo ◽  
Alessandro Tavano ◽  
Anna Milani ◽  
Sara Martelli ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Down Syndrome ◽  
Williams Syndrome ◽  
Cognitive Profile ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Visual Spatial ◽  
Abstract Words ◽  
Concrete Concepts ◽  
Concrete Words

It has been shown that abstract concepts are more difficult to process and are acquired later than concrete concepts. We analysed the percentage of concrete words in the narrative lexicon of individuals with Williams Syndrome (WS) as compared to individuals with Down Syndrome (DS) and typically developing (TD) peers. The cognitive profile of WS is characterized by visual-spatial difficulties, while DS presents with predominant impairments in linguistic abilities. We predicted that if linguistic abilities are crucial to the development and use of an abstract vocabulary, DS participants should display a higher concreteness index than both Williams Syndrome and typically developing individuals. Results confirm this prediction, thus supporting the hypothesis of a crucial role of linguistic processes in abstract language acquisition. Correlation analyses suggest that a maturational link exists between the level of abstractness in narrative production and syntactic comprehension.

scholarly journals Abstract, emotional and concrete concepts and the activation of mouth-hand effectors.

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Mazzuca ◽  
Luisa Lugli ◽  
Roberto Nicoletti ◽  
Anna M Borghi
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Emotional Words ◽  
Processing Level ◽  
Concreteness Effect ◽  
Abstract Words ◽  
Concrete Concepts ◽  
Emotional Concepts

According to embodied and grounded theories concepts are grounded in sensorimotor systems. The majority of evidence supporting these views concerns concepts referring to objects or actions, while evidence on abstract concepts is more scarce. Explaining how abstract concepts, as “freedom”, are represented, would however be pivotal for grounded theories. According to some recent proposals, abstract concepts are grounded evoking both sensorimotor and linguistic experience, thus activating the mouth motor system more than concrete concepts. Two experiments are reported, aimed at verifying whether abstract, concrete and emotional words activate the mouth and hand effectors. In both experiments participants performed first a lexical decision, then a recognition task. In Experiment 1 participants responded by pressing a button either with the mouth or with the hand, in Experiment 2 responses were given with the foot, while a button held either in the mouth or in the hand was used to respond to catch-trials. Abstract words were slower to process in both tasks (concreteness effect). Across the tasks and experiments, emotional concepts had instead a fluctuating pattern, different from those of both concrete and abstract concepts, suggesting that they cannot be considered as a subset of abstract concepts. The interaction between kind of concept (abstract, concrete and emotional) and effector (mouth, hand) was not significant in the lexical decision task, likely because it emerged only with tasks implying a deeper processing level. It reached significance, instead, in the accuracy analyses of the recognition tasks. In both experiments abstract concepts yielded less errors in the mouth than in the hand condition, supporting our main prediction. Emotional concepts had instead a more variable pattern. Overall, our findings indicate that different kinds of concepts differently activate the mouth and hand effectors, but they also suggests that concepts activate effectors in a flexible and task-dependent way.

scholarly journals Abstract, emotional and concrete concepts and the activation of mouth-hand effectors

PeerJ ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. e5987 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Mazzuca ◽  
Luisa Lugli ◽  
Mariagrazia Benassi ◽  
Roberto Nicoletti ◽  
Anna M. Borghi
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Emotional Words ◽  
Processing Level ◽  
Concreteness Effect ◽  
Abstract Words ◽  
Concrete Concepts ◽  
Emotional Concepts

According to embodied and grounded theories, concepts are grounded in sensorimotor systems. The majority of evidence supporting these views concerns concepts referring to objects or actions, while evidence on abstract concepts is more scarce. Explaining how abstract concepts such as “freedom” are represented would thus be pivotal for grounded theories. According to some recent proposals, abstract concepts are grounded in both sensorimotor and linguistic experience, thus they activate the mouth motor system more than concrete concepts. Two experiments are reported, aimed at verifying whether abstract, concrete and emotional words activate the mouth and the hand effectors. In both experiments participants performed first a lexical decision, then a recognition task. In Experiment 1 participants responded by pressing a button either with the mouth or with the hand, in Experiment 2 responses were given with the foot, while a button held either in the mouth or in the hand was used to respond to catch-trials. Abstract words were slower to process in both tasks (concreteness effect). Across the tasks and experiments, emotional concepts had instead a fluctuating pattern, different from those of both concrete and abstract concepts, suggesting that they cannot be considered as a subset of abstract concepts. The interaction between type of concept (abstract, concrete and emotional) and effector (mouth, hand) was not significant in the lexical decision task, likely because it emerged only with tasks implying a deeper processing level. It reached significance, instead, in the recognition tasks. In both experiments abstract concepts were facilitated in the mouth condition compared to the hand condition, supporting our main prediction. Emotional concepts instead had a more variable pattern. Overall, our findings indicate that various kinds of concepts differently activate the mouth and hand effectors, but they also suggest that concepts activate effectors in a flexible and task-dependent way.

scholarly journals Emotion and concreteness effects when learning novel concepts in the native language

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-191
Author(s):  
Marc Guasch ◽  
Pilar Ferré
Keyword(s):  
Native Language ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Intentional Learning ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Word Forms ◽  
Abstract Words ◽  
Concrete Concepts ◽  
Concrete Words ◽  
Better Than

Abstract The aim of the present study was to test the proposal of Kousta et al. (2011), according to which abstract words are more affectively loaded than concrete words. To this end, we focused on the acquisition of novel concepts by means of an intentional learning experiment in which participants had to learn a set of 40 novel concepts in Spanish (definitions) associated with novel word forms (pseudowords). Concreteness (concrete vs. abstract concepts) and emotionality (neutral vs. negative concepts) were orthogonally manipulated. Acquisition was assessed through a recognition task in which participants were asked to match the novel word forms with their definitions. Results showed that concrete concepts were acquired better than abstract concepts. Importantly, the concreteness advantage disappeared when the content of the concept was negative. Hence, emotional (negative) content facilitated the acquisition of abstract concepts, but not of concrete concepts, giving support to the proposal of Kousta et al. (2011).

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