Processing Of Concrete Words Research Articles

Functional connectivity of brain networks during semantic processing in older adults.

The neural systems underlying semantic processing have been characterized with functional neuroimaging in young adults. Whether the integrity of these systems degrade with advanced age remains unresolved. The current study examined functional connectivity during abstract and concrete word processing. Thirty-eight adults, aged 55-91, engaged in semantic association decision tasks during a mixed event-related block functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigm. During the semantic trials, the task required participants to make a judgment as to whether pairs were semantically associated. During the rhyme trials, the task required participants to determine if non-word pairs rhymed. Seeds were placed in putative semantic hubs of the left anterior middle temporal gyrus (aMTG) and the angular gyrus (AG), and also in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), an area considered important for semantic control. Greater connectivity between aMTG, AG, and IFG and multiple cortical areas occurred during semantic processing. Connectivity from the three seeds differed during semantic processing: the left AG and aMTG were strongly connected with frontal, parietal, and occipital areas bilaterally, whereas the IFG was most strongly connected with other frontal cortical areas and the AG in the ipsilateral left hemisphere. Notably, the strength and extent of connectivity differed for abstract and concrete semantic processing; connectivity from the left aMTG and AG to bilateral cortical areas was greater during abstract processing, whereas IFG connectivity with left cortical areas was greater during concrete processing. With advanced age, greater connectivity occurred only between the left AG and supramarginal gyrus during the processing of concrete word-pairs, but not abstract word-pairs. Among older adults, robust functional connectivity of the aMTG, AG, and IFG to widely distributed bilateral cortical areas occurs during abstract and concrete semantic processing in a manner consistent with reports from past studies of young adults. There was not a significant degradation of functional connectivity during semantic processing between the ages of 55 and 85 years. As the study focused on semantic functioning in older adults, a comparison group of young adults was not included, limiting generalizability. Future longitudinal neuroimaging studies that compare functional connectivity of young and older adults under different semantic demands will be valuable.

Event related potential exploration of the organizational structure of abstract versus concrete words in neurologically intact younger adults

The purpose of this study was to test the effects of concreteness and relationship type (similarity vs. association) on semantic processing using event-related potentials (ERP). Neurophysiological evidence has been found for the concreteness effect and for an effect of relationship type. This study replicated and extended these findings by investigating the interaction of concreteness and relationship type. Twenty-four neurologically healthy young adults performed lexical decision and semantic relatedness tasks while continuous scalp EEG was recorded. Larger N400 effects were found for concrete words in associative relationships than for concrete words in similarity relationships and abstract words in either type of relationship. The results are discussed in relation to the different representational frameworks account for abstract and concrete word processing.

Spatiotemporal target selection for intracranial neural decoding of abstract and concrete semantics.

Decoding the inner representation of a word meaning from human cortical activity is a substantial challenge in the development of speech brain-machine interfaces (BMIs). The semantic aspect of speech is a novel target of speech decoding that may enable versatile communication platforms for individuals with impaired speech ability; however, there is a paucity of electrocorticography studies in this field. We decoded the semantic representation of a word from single-trial cortical activity during an imageability-based property identification task that required participants to discriminate between the abstract and concrete words. Using high gamma activity in the language-dominant hemisphere, a support vector machine classifier could discriminate the 2-word categories with significantly high accuracy (73.1 ± 7.5%). Activities in specific time components from two brain regions were identified as significant predictors of abstract and concrete dichotomy. Classification using these feature components revealed that comparable prediction accuracy could be obtained based on a spatiotemporally targeted decoding approach. Our study demonstrated that mental representations of abstract and concrete word processing could be decoded from cortical high gamma activities, and the coverage of implanted electrodes and time window of analysis could be successfully minimized. Our findings lay the foundation for the future development of semantic-based speech BMIs.

Does visualisation help or hinder concrete word processing?

In an iconicity judgement task, participants were asked whether word pairs were iconic (e.g., nose-tongue; joy-sorrow) or reverse-iconic (e.g., tongue-nose; sorrow-joy), and an advantage for abstract word pairs (i.e., joy-sorrow) was found. Malhi and Buchanan proposed that this reverse concreteness, or abstractness, effect was the result of participants taking a visualisation/imagining (time-costly) approach towards the concrete word pairs and an emotional/intuitive (time-efficient) approach towards the abstract word pairs. This study tested this proposal by asking participants questions about strategy use (Experiment 1). In the forced-choice questions, all participants reported using a visualisation/imagining approach towards the concrete word pairs and most participants reported using an emotional/intuitive approach towards the abstract word pairs. In the open-ended responses, visual-spatial reasoning and real-life experience emerged as themes for the concrete word pairs and social norms and values emerged as themes for the abstract word pairs, adding to our understanding of the grounding of abstract words. In Experiment 2, participants were supplied with pictures as an aid to visualisation with the expectation that this would reduce the time required for concrete word processing. Supplying pictures made participants faster and more accurate at completing the task. Experiment 3 manipulated the type of visual aid by also supplying pictures that did not match the orientation of the word pairs. Participants were only more accurate when the pictures were in the correct and iconic spatial arrangement. A flexible abstractness and concreteness effects (FACE) theory is proposed which integrates symbolic and embodied accounts and introduces constructs such as direct and constrained imageability for concrete words and indirect and free imageability for abstract words.

Overlapping connectivity patterns during semantic processing of abstract and concrete words revealed with multivariate Granger Causality analysis

, unlike concrete, nouns refer to notions beyond our perception. Even though there is no consensus among linguists as to what exactly constitutes a concrete or abstract word, neuroscientists found clear evidence of a “concreteness” effect. This can, for instance, be seen in patients with language impairments due to brain injury or developmental disorder who are capable of perceiving one category better than another. Even though the results are inconclusive, neuroimaging studies on healthy subjects also provide a spatial and temporal account of differences in the processing of abstract versus concrete words. A description of the neural pathways during abstract word reading, the manner in which the connectivity patterns develop over the different stages of lexical and semantic processing compared to that of concrete word processing are still debated. We conducted a high-density EEG study on 24 healthy young volunteers using an implicit categorization task. From this, we obtained high spatio-temporal resolution data and, by means of source reconstruction, reduced the effect of signal mixing observed on scalp level. A multivariate, time-varying and directional method of analyzing connectivity based on the concept of Granger Causality (Partial Directed Coherence) revealed a dynamic network that transfers information from the right superior occipital lobe along the ventral and dorsal streams towards the anterior temporal and orbitofrontal lobes of both hemispheres. Some regions along these pathways appear to be primarily involved in either receiving or sending information. A clear difference in information transfer of abstract and concrete words was observed during the time window of semantic processing, specifically for information transferred towards the left anterior temporal lobe. Further exploratory analysis confirmed a generally stronger connectivity pattern for processing concrete words. We believe our study could guide future research towards a more refined theory of abstract word processing in the brain.

Distinct Functional Network Connectivity for Abstract and Concrete Mental Imagery.

In several behavioral psycholinguistic studies, it has been shown that concrete words are processed more efficiently. They can be remembered faster, recognized better, and can be learned easier than abstract words. This fact is called concreteness effect. There are fMRI studies which compared the neural representations of concrete and abstract concepts in terms of activated regions. In the present study, a comparison has been made between the condition-specific connectivity of functional networks (obtained by group ICA) during imagery of abstract and concrete words. The obtained results revealed that the functional network connectivity between three pairs of networks during concrete imagery is significantly different from that of abstract imagery (FDR correction at the significance level of 0.05). These results suggest that abstract and concrete concepts have different representations in terms of functional network connectivity pattern. Remarkably, in all of these network pairs, the connectivity during concrete imagery is significantly higher than that of abstract imagery. These more coherent networks include both linguistic and visual regions with a higher engagement of the right hemisphere, so the results are in line with dual coding theory. Additionally, these three pairs of networks include the contrasting regions which have shown stronger activation either in concrete or abstract word processing in former studies. The findings imply that the brain is more integrated and synchronized at the time of concrete imagery and it may explain the reason of faster concrete words processing. In order to validate the results, we used functional network connectivity distributions (FNCD). Wilcoxon rank-sum test was used to check if the abstract and concrete FNCDs extracted from whole subjects are the same. The result revealed that the corresponding distributions are different which indicates two different patterns of connectivity for abstract and concrete word processing. Also, the mean of FNCD is significantly higher at the time of concrete imagery than that of abstract imagery. Furthermore, FNCDs at the single-subject level are significantly more left-skewed or equally, include more strong connectivity for concrete imagery.

Investigating the functional neuroanatomy of concrete and abstract word processing through direct electric stimulation (DES) during awake surgery

ABSTRACTNeuropsychological, neuroimaging and electrophysiological studies demonstrate that abstract and concrete word processing relies not only on the activity of a common bilateral network but also on dedicated networks. The neuropsychological literature has shown that a selective sparing of abstract relative to concrete words can be documented in lesions of the left anterior temporal regions. We investigated concrete and abstract word processing in 10 patients undergoing direct electrical stimulation (DES) for brain mapping during awake surgery in the left hemisphere. A lexical decision and a concreteness judgment task were added to the neuropsychological assessment during intra-operative monitoring. On the concreteness judgment, DES delivered over the inferior frontal gyrus significantly decreased abstract word accuracy while accuracy for concrete words decreased when the anterior temporal cortex was stimulated. These results are consistent with a lexical–semantic model that distinguishes between concrete and abstract words related to different neural substrates in the left hemisphere.

The Automatic Activation of Emotion and Emotion-Laden Words: Evidence from a Masked and Unmasked Priming Paradigm.

A primed lexical decision task (LDT) was used to determine whether emotion (e.g., love, fear) and emotion-laden (e.g., puppy, hospital) word processing differs, both explicitly and implicitly. Previous experiments have investigated how emotion word processing differs from both abstract and concrete word processing (Altarriba & Bauer, 2004; Altarriba, Bauer, & Benvenuto, 1999). To assess for differences between emotion and emotion-laden word processing, 2 experiments were conducted, the first assessing explicit processing (using an unmasked LDT) and the second assessing automatic processing (using a masked LDT). The prediction that semantic priming would differ between emotion word pairs and emotion-laden word pairs was confirmed in both experiments, with shorter response times for emotion targets and greater priming effects for emotion word pairs than for emotion-laden word pairs. The role of valence is discussed, emphasizing the ways valence affects the speed with which these words are accessed and processed.

Changes in functional connectivity related to direct training and generalization effects of a word finding treatment in chronic aphasia

The neural mechanisms that underlie generalization of treatment-induced improvements in word finding in persons with aphasia (PWA) are currently poorly understood. This study aimed to shed light on changes in functional network connectivity underlying generalization in aphasia. To this end, we used fMRI and graph theoretic analyses to examine changes in functional connectivity after a theoretically-based word-finding treatment in which abstract words were used as training items with the goal of promoting generalization to concrete words. Ten right-handed native English-speaking PWA (7 male, 3 female) ranging in age from 47 to 75 (mean=59) participated in this study. Direct training effects coincided with increased functional connectivity for regions involved in abstract word processing. Generalization effects coincided with increased functional connectivity for regions involved in concrete word processing. Importantly, similarities between training and generalization effects were noted as were differences between participants who generalized and those who did not.

Situated conceptualization and semantic processing: effects of emotional experience and context availability in semantic categorization and naming tasks.

It has been proposed that much of conceptual knowledge is acquired through situated conceptualization, such that both external (e.g., agents, objects, events) and internal (e.g., emotions, introspections) environments are considered important (Barsalou, 2003). To evaluate this proposal, we characterized two dimensions by which situated conceptualization may be measured and which should have different relevance for abstract and concrete concepts; namely, emotional experience (i.e., the ease with which words evoke emotional experience; Newcombe, Campbell, Siakaluk, & Pexman, 2012) and context availability (i.e., the ease with which words evoke contexts in which their referents may appear; Schwanenflugel & Shoben, 1983). We examined the effects of these two dimensions on abstract and concrete word processing in verbal semantic categorization (VSCT) and naming tasks. In the VSCT, emotional experience facilitated processing of abstract words but inhibited processing of concrete words, whereas context availability facilitated processing of both types of words. In the naming task in which abstract words and concrete words were not blocked by emotional experience, context availability facilitated responding to only the abstract words. In the naming task in which abstract words and concrete words were blocked by emotional experience, emotional experience facilitated responding to only the abstract words, whereas context availability facilitated responding to only the concrete words. These results were observed even with several lexical (e.g., frequency, age of acquisition) and semantic (e.g., concreteness, arousal, valence) variables included in the analyses. As such, the present research suggests that emotional experience and context availability tap into different aspects of situated conceptualization and make unique contributions to the representation and processing of abstract and concrete concepts.

Changes in Functional Connectivity Associated with Direct Training and Generalization Effects of a Theory-Based Generative Naming Treatment

Persons with aphasia who are trained to generate abstract words (e.g., justice) in a specific context-category (e.g., courthouse) have been shown to improve not only on the trained items, but also on concrete words (e.g., lawyer) in the same context-category (Kiran, Sandberg, & Abbott, 2009). However, the underlying neural mechanism of this generalization effect is unknown. Abstract and concrete words provide a unique opportunity to study specific neural activity related to direct training and generalization because they are thought to be processed differently by the brain (Binder, Desai, Graves, & Conant, 2009; Wang, Conder, Blitzer, & Shinkareva, 2010), but are linked in such a way as to promote generalization (Kiran et al., 2009). The current study examines the neural activation and functional connectivity patterns of abstract and concrete word processing in persons with aphasia before and after training abstract word retrieval to help uncover the neural mechanisms associated with direct training and generalization.

Analysis of abstract and concrete word processing in persons with aphasia and age-matched neurologically healthy adults using fMRI

The concreteness effect occurs in both normal and language-disordered populations. Research suggests that abstract and concrete concepts elicit differing neural activation patterns in healthy young adults, but this is undocumented in persons with aphasia (PWA). Three PWA and three age-matched controls were scanned using fMRI while processing abstract and concrete words. Consistent with current theories of abstract and concrete word processing, abstract words elicited activation in verbal areas, whereas concrete words additionally activated multimodal association areas. PWA show greater differences in neural activation than age-matched controls between abstract and concrete words, possibly due to an exaggerated concreteness effect.

Imagining the truth and the moon: An electrophysiological study of abstract and concrete word processing

Previous event-related potential studies have indicated that both a widespread N400 and an anterior N700 index differential processing of concrete and abstract words, but the nature of these components in relation to concreteness and imagery has been unclear. Here, we separated the effects of word concreteness and task demands on the N400 and N700 in a single word processing paradigm with a within-subjects, between-tasks design and carefully controlled word stimuli. The N400 was larger to concrete words than to abstract words, and larger in the visualization task condition than in the surface task condition, with no interaction. A marked anterior N700 was elicited only by concrete words in the visualization task condition, suggesting that this component indexes imagery. These findings are consistent with a revised or extended dual coding theory according to which concrete words benefit from greater activation in both verbal and imagistic systems.

The role of sensorimotor processing in the semantic processing of concrete words

The role of sensorimotor processing in the semantic processing of concrete words

The neural manifestation of the word concreteness effect: An electrical neuroimaging study

Previous studies have provided controversial evidence about the way in which words with different degrees of concreteness are represented in the brain. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether the processing of abstract vs. concrete words differently affected the timing and topographical distribution of ERP components. Participants were engaged in a lexical decision task (word/non-word discrimination) while EEG was recorded from 128 scalp sites. Reaction times (RTs) to words were faster than RTs to pseudowords. Words were discriminated from pseudowords since larger N2 responses to words than to pseudowords were observed over the left occipito-temporal areas at 300ms post-stimulus. Concrete words and abstract words were discriminated as early as 350ms post-stimulus, with larger responses to concrete than to abstract words over the mesial occipital regions. Concreteness-related ERP differences were also observed in the amplitudes of the later anterior LP component (between 370 and 570ms), with larger responses to abstract words than to concrete words. The LORETA source localization technique was also applied to identify the intra-cranial generators of surface potentials reflecting lexico-semantic processing. Results showed that words (both abstract and concrete) were associated with a stronger activation of the left fusiform gyrus and the left temporal cortex, as compared to pseudowords. Concrete word processing was associated with a stronger activation of the left extrastriate visual areas (namely BA 18 and BA 19) as compared to abstract word processing. By revealing the neural markers of the concreteness effect, our study contributes to the understanding of the neurogenesis of verbal semantic knowledge impairments and the incidence of these impairments in clinical populations.

P8-27 The role of visual imagery in concrete word processing: Effects of dynamic visual noise on event-related potentials to spoken words

P8-27 The role of visual imagery in concrete word processing: Effects of dynamic visual noise on event-related potentials to spoken words

Grasping language – A short story on embodiment

The new concept of embodied cognition theories has been enthusiastically studied by the cognitive sciences, by as well as such disparate disciplines as philosophy, anthropology, neuroscience, and robotics. Embodiment theory provides the framework for ongoing discussions on the linkage between “low” cognitive processes as perception and “high” cognition as language processing and comprehension, respectively. This review gives an overview along the lines of argumentation in the ongoing debate on the embodiment of language and employs an ALE meta-analysis to illustrate and weigh previous findings.The collected evidence on the somatotopic activation of motor areas, abstract and concrete word processing, as well as from reported patient and timing studies emphasizes the important role of sensorimotor areas in language processing and supports the hypothesis that the motor system is activated during language comprehension.

動的視覚ノイズが具象語の処理を反映するＥＲＰ成分に及ぼす影響

本研究では，視覚イメージ処理の妨害が具象語および抽象語が惹起する事象関連脳電位に及ぼす影響を調べ，単語処理における視覚イメージ処理の有無と時間経過を検討した。健常成人を対象に名詞の心像性を評定する課題を実施し，視覚ノイズを観察する群(6名)と灰色の静止画面を観察する統制群(6名)を設けて，音声単語が惹起する電位を検討した。結果，視察上で，具象語条件と抽象語条件の電位は前期と後期の時間窓で乖離し，具象語条件で抽象語条件よりも陰性にシフトする効果がみられた。前期の陰性シフト効果は統制群で有意であったが，視覚ノイズ観察群では有意な陰性シフトが生じなかった。この結果は，具象語と抽象語が惹起する脳電位の差は，視覚イメージ処理を含んだ，具象語と抽象語の質的な処理の違いを反映し，特に前期区間における陰性電位は具象語処理における視覚イメージ処理を反映することを示唆する。

Functional Neuroanatomy of Contextual Acquisition of Concrete and Abstract Words

The meaning of a novel word can be acquired by extracting it from linguistic context. Here we simulated word learning of new words associated to concrete and abstract concepts in a variant of the human simulation paradigm that provided linguistic context information in order to characterize the brain systems involved. Native speakers of Spanish read pairs of sentences in order to derive the meaning of a new word that appeared in the terminal position of the sentences. fMRI revealed that learning the meaning associated to concrete and abstract new words was qualitatively different and recruited similar brain regions as the processing of real concrete and abstract words. In particular, learning of new concrete words selectively boosted the activation of the ventral anterior fusiform gyrus, a region driven by imageability, which has previously been implicated in the processing of concrete words.

Differential effects of normal aging on recollection of concrete and abstract words.

Verbal memory is known to be affected by word features. Concrete words are remembered better than abstract words (concreteness effect), presumably due to the concurrent activation of image-based and/or semantic associations. Vivid remembering during recognition (recollection) has been linked to the hippocampus and is thought to be more affected by healthy aging than familiarity-based recognition. Recent evidence also implicated the hippocampus in the processing of concrete words. Based on these observations, we hypothesized age-related changes in recollection to affect concrete words more than abstract words. This prediction was tested in a cross-sectional design with three consecutive age groups (mean ages 21 years, 42 years, and 61 years). Changes in recollection, but not familiarity, across ages were significantly modulated by word concreteness. Recollection of concrete words showed a steady decline across age, while recollection of abstract words decreased only from young to middle age, leading to a reduced concreteness effect in the oldest group. These findings are consistent with the idea that changes in hippocampally mediated recollective processes during aging affect concrete words more than abstract words.