Troche, J;
Crutch, S;
Reilly, J;
(2014)
Clustering, hierarchical organization, and the topography of abstract and concrete nouns.
Front Psychol
, 5
, Article 360. 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00360.
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Abstract
The empirical study of language has historically relied heavily upon concrete word stimuli. By definition, concrete words evoke salient perceptual associations that fit well within feature-based, sensorimotor models of word meaning. In contrast, many theorists argue that abstract words are "disembodied" in that their meaning is mediated through language. We investigated word meaning as distributed in multidimensional space using hierarchical cluster analysis. Participants (N = 365) rated target words (n = 400 English nouns) across 12 cognitive dimensions (e.g., polarity, ease of teaching, emotional valence). Factor reduction revealed three latent factors, corresponding roughly to perceptual salience, affective association, and magnitude. We plotted the original 400 words for the three latent factors. Abstract and concrete words showed overlap in their topography but also differentiated themselves in semantic space. This topographic approach to word meaning offers a unique perspective to word concreteness.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Clustering, hierarchical organization, and the topography of abstract and concrete nouns. |
| Location: | Switzerland |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00360 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00360 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2014 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. PMCID: PMC4009417 |
| Keywords: | abstract concepts, concreteness, embodied cognition, emotion, magnitude, semantic memory |
| 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.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1430124 |
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