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 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 concepts in interaction: The need of others when guessing abstract concepts smooths dyadic motor interactions

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara Fini ◽  
Vanessa Era ◽  
Federico Darold ◽  
Matteo Candidi ◽  
Anna M. Borghi
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Communication ◽  
Interpersonal Behavior ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Single Object ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Interaction Task ◽  
Concrete Concepts ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Motor Interaction

Abstract concepts (e.g. “justice”) differ from concrete concepts (e.g. “table”) because they are more detached from exteroceptive and more grounded in interoceptive experience, they do not possess a single object as referent, and they assemble quite heterogeneous members. Recent views have hypothesized that interpersonal communication is particularly crucial to acquire and use abstract concepts. The current study investigates the impact of abstract/concrete concepts representation over interpersonal behavior. We asked participants to perform a motor interaction task with two avatars who embodied two real confederates. Before and after the motor interaction task, the two confederates provided participants with hints in a concept guessing task: one helped in guessing abstract concepts and the other concrete ones. Participants asked more hints with abstract concepts and were more synchronous when interacting with the avatar corresponding to the abstract concept’s confederate. The results highlight an important role of sociality in grounding abstract concepts.

scholarly journals Role of Inner Speech on Serial Recall in Children with ASD: A Pilot Study Using the Luria Hand Test

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Shota Mitsuhashi ◽  
Shogo Hirata ◽  
Hideyuki Okuzumi
Keyword(s):  
Serial Recall ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Articulatory Suppression ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Social Impairment ◽  
Inner Speech ◽  
Children With Asd ◽  
Hand Test ◽  
Spectrum Disorders

This study was conducted to investigate the relation between the effect of articulatory suppression on the serial recall and severity of social impairments among children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The Luria hand test (LHT) was administered to evaluate the capacity for serial recall in 13 children with ASD. The LHT was administered under three conditions: control, under articulatory suppression, and under spatial suppression. Performance on the LHT of children with ASD was significantly lower in terms of both articulatory suppression and the spatial suppression condition. Moreover, the severity of social impairment in children with ASD was related to individual differences of effects of articulatory suppression on the LHT, but not with effects of spatial suppression. These results support the notion that dialogic inner speech which mediates complex cognitive abilities has inherently social origins.

scholarly journals Abstract concepts, language and sociality: from acquisition to inner speech

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1752) ◽  
pp. 20170134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna M. Borghi ◽  
Laura Barca ◽  
Ferdinand Binkofski ◽  
Luca Tummolini
Keyword(s):  
Motor System ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Social Experiences ◽  
Inner Speech ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
System Activation ◽  
Abstract Words ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Conceptual Meaning

The problem of representation of abstract concepts, such as ‘freedom’ and ‘justice’, has become particularly crucial in recent years, owing to the increased success of embodied and grounded views of cognition. We will present a novel view on abstract concepts and abstract words. Since abstract concepts do not have single objects as referents, children and adults might rely more on input from others to learn them; we, therefore, suggest that linguistic and social experience play an important role for abstract concepts. We will discuss evidence obtained in our and other laboratories showing that processing of abstract concepts evokes linguistic interaction and social experiences, leading to the activation of the mouth motor system. We will discuss the possible mechanisms that underlie this activation. Mouth motor system activation can be due to re-enactment of the experience of conceptual acquisition, which occurred through the mediation of language. Alternatively, it could be due to the re-explanation of the word meaning, possibly through inner speech. Finally, it can be due to a metacognitive process revealing low confidence in the meaning of our concepts. This process induces in us the need to rely on others to ask/negotiate conceptual meaning. We conclude that with abstract concepts language works as a social tool: it extends our thinking abilities and pushes us to rely on others to integrate our knowledge. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Varieties of abstract concepts: development, use, and representation in the brain’.

scholarly journals The role of emotional valence in learning novel abstract concepts

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriella Vigliocco ◽  
Marta Ponari ◽  
Courtenay Norbury
Keyword(s):  
Teaching Strategy ◽  
Age Of Acquisition ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
The Other ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Emotional Information ◽  
Emotional Words ◽  
Abstract Words ◽  
Better Than

A recent study by Ponari et al. (2017), showed that emotional valence (i.e., whether a word evokes positive, negative or no affect) predicts age-of-acquisition ratings, and that up to the age of 8-9, children know abstract emotional words better than neutral ones. On the basis of these findings, emotional valence has been argued to provide a bootstrapping mechanism for the acquisition of abstract concepts. However, no previous work has directly assessed whether words’ valence, or valence of the context in which words are used, facilitates learning of unknown abstract words. Here, we investigate whether valence supports acquisition of novel abstract concepts. Seven to 10 years old children were taught novel abstract words and concepts (words typically learnt at an older age and that children did not know); words were either valenced (positive or negative) or neutral. We also manipulated the context in which words were presented: for one group of children, the teaching strategy emphasised emotional information; for the other, it emphasised encyclopaedic, non-emotional information. Abstract words with emotional valence were learnt better than neutral abstract words by children up to the age of 8-9, replicating previous findings; no effect of teaching strategy was found. These results indicate that emotional valence supports abstract concepts acquisition, and further suggest that it is the valence information intrinsic to the word’s meaning to have a role, rather than the valence of the context in which the word is learnt.

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 From Affordances to Abstract Words: The Flexibility of the Sensorimotor Grounding

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Mazzuca ◽  
Chiara Fini ◽  
Arthur Henri Michalland ◽  
Ilenia Falcinelli ◽  
Federico Da Rold ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Word Processing ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Inner Speech ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Sensorimotor System ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Abstract Words ◽  
Complex Words ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Concrete Words

Recent research has shown that the sensorimotor system plays a significant role in a variety of cognitive processes. In this paper, we will review recent studies performed in our lab (Body Action Language Lab, BALLAB) or in labs with which we collaborate, showing the involvement of the sensorimotor system at different levels. With the purpose of expounding on this aspect, we focus on studies that highlight two main characteristics of the involvement of the sensorimotor systems. First, we concentrate on the flexibility of sensorimotor grounding during interaction with objects. We report evidence showing how social context and current situations influence affordance activation. We then focus on the tactile and kinesthetic involvement in body-object interaction. Second, we illustrate flexible sensorimotor grounding in word use. We review studies showing that not only concrete words, like “bottle,” but also abstract words, like “freedom,” “thinking,” and “perhaps,” are grounded in the sensorimotor system. We report evidence showing that abstract words activate sensory modalities and involve the mouth effector more than concrete words due to their privileged relationship with language, both outer and inner speech. We discuss the activation of the mouth sensorimotor system in light of studies on adults (e.g., studies employing articulatory suppression), children (e.g., studies on the effects of pacifier use on word acquisition and processing), and infants (e.g. studies on emergence of new words). Finally, we pinpoint possible mechanisms at play in the acquisition and use of abstract concepts. We argue that with abstract concepts, we rely more on other people to learn or negotiate the meaning of words; we have called this mechanism social metacognition.Social metacognition is bidirectionally linked to our sensorimotor system. On the one hand, linguistic explanations constitute a primary source of grounding that may be re-enacted when retrieving a concept, for example through inner speech. On the other hand, it leads us to feel closer and be more synchronous in movement with others, who can help us understand the meaning of very complex words. Overall, we show that the sensorimotor system provides a grounding basis not only for objects and concrete words but also for more abstract and concrete ones. We conclude by arguing that future research should address and deepen two different and interrelated aspects concerning the involvement of the sensorimotor system during object and word processing. First, the sensorimotor system is flexibly modulated by the context, as studies on affordances reveal. Second, the sensorimotor system can be involved at different levels, and its role can be integrated and flanked by that of other systems, like the linguistic one, as studies on abstract concepts clearly show. We urge future research aimed at unravelling the role of the sensorimotor system in cognition to fully explore the complexity of this intricate-and sometimes slippery-relation.

scholarly journals Abstract concepts, language and sociality: from acquisition to inner speech

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna M. Borghi ◽  
Laura Barca ◽  
Ferdinand Binkofski ◽  
Luca Tummolini
Keyword(s):  
Motor System ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Social Experience ◽  
Social Experiences ◽  
Inner Speech ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
System Activation ◽  
Abstract Words ◽  
Conceptual Meaning

The problem of representation of abstract concepts, such as “freedom” and “justice”, has become particularly crucial in recent years, due to the increased success of embodied and grounded views of cognition. We will present a novel view on abstract concepts and abstract words. Since abstract concepts do not have single objects as referents, children and adults might rely more on input from others to learn them; we therefore suggest that linguistic and social experience play an important role for abstract concepts. We will discuss evidence obtained in our and other labs showing that processing of abstract concepts evokes linguistic interaction and social experiences, leading to the activation of the mouth motor system. We will discuss the possible mechanisms that underlie this activation. Mouth motor system activation can be due to re-enactment of the experience of conceptual acquisition, which occurred through the mediation of language. Alternatively, it could be due to the re-explanation of the word meaning, possibly through inner speech. Finally, it can be due to a metacognitive process revealing low confidence in the meaning of our concepts. This process induces in us the need to rely on others to ask/negotiate conceptual meaning. We conclude that with abstract concepts language works as a social tool: it extends our thinking abilities and pushes us to rely on others to integrate our knowledge.

scholarly journals Concepts, abstractness, and inner speech

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna M. Borghi ◽  
Charles Fernyhough
Keyword(s):  
Concept Learning ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Inner Speech ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Social Exchanges ◽  
Social Metacognition

We explore the role of inner speech (covert self-directed talk) during the acquisition and use of concepts differing in abstractness. Following Vygotsky, inner speech results from the internationalization of linguistically mediated interactions that regulate cognition and behaviour. When we acquire and processabstract concepts, uncertainties about word meaning might lead us to search actively for their meaning.Inner speech might play a role in this searching process and be differentially involved in concept learning compared to use of known concepts. Importantly, inner speech comes in different varieties – e.g., it can be expanded or condensed (with the latter involving syntactic and semantic forms of abbreviation). Do we useinner speech differently with concepts varying in abstractness? Which kinds of inner speech do we preferentially use with different kinds of abstract concepts (e.g., emotions vs. numbers)? What other features of inner speech, such as dialogicality, might facilitate our use of concepts varying in abstractness(byallowing us to monitor the limits of our knowledge in simulated social exchanges, through a process we term inner social metacognition)? In tackling these questions, we address the possibility that different varieties of inner speech are flexibly used during the acquisition of concepts and their everyday use.

scholarly journals Evidence for the Concreteness of Abstract Language: A Meta-Analysis of Neuroimaging Studies

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 32
Author(s):  
Nicola Del Maschio ◽  
Davide Fedeli ◽  
Gioacchino Garofalo ◽  
Giovanni Buccino
Keyword(s):  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Broca’S Region ◽  
Complex Motor ◽  
Concrete Concepts ◽  
Motor Representations ◽  
Better Than

The neural mechanisms subserving the processing of abstract concepts remain largely debated. Even within the embodiment theoretical framework, most authors suggest that abstract concepts are coded in a linguistic propositional format, although they do not completely deny the role of sensorimotor and emotional experiences in coding it. To our knowledge, only one recent proposal puts forward that the processing of concrete and abstract concepts relies on the same mechanisms, with the only difference being in the complexity of the underlying experiences. In this paper, we performed a meta-analysis using the Activation Likelihood Estimates (ALE) method on 33 functional neuroimaging studies that considered activations related to abstract and concrete concepts. The results suggest that (1) concrete and abstract concepts share the recruitment of the temporo-fronto-parietal circuits normally involved in the interactions with the physical world, (2) processing concrete concepts recruits fronto-parietal areas better than abstract concepts, and (3) abstract concepts recruit Broca’s region more strongly than concrete ones. Based on anatomical and physiological evidence, Broca’s region is not only a linguistic region mainly devoted to speech production, but it is endowed with complex motor representations of different biological effectors. Hence, we propose that the stronger recruitment of this region for abstract concepts is expression of the complex sensorimotor experiences underlying it, rather than evidence of a purely linguistic format of its processing.

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