The Structure and Content of Abstract Concepts in the Human Mind and Brain

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Language is an essential aspect of being human. A lot of our language and communication depends on people being able to use and understand words that refer to abstract concepts, such as "approval", "ambition", or "justice". These types of abstract concepts are critical for communicating about our emotions, beliefs, and thoughts, as well as for understanding the world around us. They also are crucial to many of modern society's functions and institutions, such as education, science, politics, and law. For all of these reasons, how people learn and understand abstract concepts is an important issue in Cognitive Science. Researchers have been working toward understanding how people mentally represent abstract concepts, and there has been progress. However, progress has been difficult because abstract concepts are, by their very nature, quite intangible. In the proposed research, we will investigate a new theory that focuses on the importance of real-world situations in people's knowledge of abstract concepts. For example, when one thinks of "justice", situations may be brought to mind involving perhaps a courtroom, a judge, a defendant, and lawyers, and actions involved in a trial. In the other direction, when hearing about a situation involving these settings, participants, and actions, it may activate the concept of "justice" in your mind. Although this theory is both intriguing and promising, it has not yet been tested scientifically in any detailed manner. This proposal outlines a series of projects designed to test whether, and in what particular ways, knowledge of such situations are important to people's representation of abstract concepts. We will assess the situational content of people's abstract conceptual knowledge, and test whether and how quickly it is activated in a person's mind when they hear or read abstract words. We will also investigate the circumstances in which abstract concepts are activated when hearing or reading about situations. The primary goal is to refine theories and add to the knowledge base in this area. By doing so, we will gain a better understanding of how humans learn, use, and comprehend language, and how they understand the world around them.