Abstract
concepts (ACs, e.g. ‘justice’) are more complex compared with concrete concepts (CCs) (e.g. ‘table’). Indeed, they do not possess a single object as a referent, they assemble quite heterogeneous members and they are more detached from exteroceptive and more grounded in interoceptive experience. Recent views have hypothesized that interpersonal communication is particularly crucial to acquire and use ACs. The current study investigates the reliance of ACs/CCs representation on interpersonal behaviour. 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 associated with visual stimuli: one helped in guessing ACs and the other, CCs. A control study we performed both with the materials employed in the main experiment and with other materials, confirmed that associating verbal concepts with visual images was more difficult with ACs than with CCs. Consistently, the results of the main experiment showed that participants asked for more hints with ACs than CCs and were more synchronous when interacting with the avatar corresponding to the AC's confederate. The results highlight an important role of sociality in grounding ACs.
Highlights
Building abstract concepts (ACs), such as ‘democracy’ and ‘justice’, is a complex and sophisticated ability, and yet the use royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/rsos R
While recent research has focused on the grounding of ACs in sensorimotor, interoceptive, emotional and linguistic experience, little work has directly investigated the relationship between ACs and sociality
We investigated whether the higher need to be helped in guessing ACs compared with CCs influenced participants’ interaction with the confederate in a human–avatar interaction task
Summary
Building abstract concepts (ACs), such as ‘democracy’ and ‘justice’, is a complex and sophisticated ability, and yet the use royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/rsos R. ACs would be grounded in sensorimotor systems (for recent evidence on the importance of visual and motor information, see [11]) like CCs, but they would activate to a larger extent linguistic, emotional and social experience. Participants performed a human–avatar motor interaction task, in which the avatar corresponded to the confederates’ self-avatars (one associated with ACs and another to CCs, respectively). They underwent another guessing section with the two confederates. We intend to verify three general hypotheses: a) We expect participants to need more others’ help in order to guess ACs than CCs. b) We hypothesize that the attempt to gain the confederate’s help leads to a more synchronous motor interaction with the ACs avatar. The goal to take advantage of the confederate’s hints in guessing ACs should lead participants to be more coordinated and imitate more the corresponding avatar—in other words, to be more cooperative
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
