Paper Info
Title
Content differences for abstract and concrete concepts.
Abstract
Concept properties are an integral part of theories of conceptual representation and processing. To date, little is known about conceptual properties of abstract concepts, such as idea. This experiment systematically compared the content of 18 abstract and 18 concrete concepts, using a feature generation task. Thirty-one participants listed characteristics of the concepts (i.e., item properties) or their relevant context (i.e., context properties). Abstract concepts had significantly fewer intrinsic item properties and more properties expressing subjective experiences than concrete concepts. Situation components generated for abstract and concrete concepts differed in kind, but not in number. Abstract concepts were predominantly related to social aspects of situations. Properties were significantly less specific for abstract than for concrete concepts. Thus, abstractness emerged as a function of several, both qualitative and quantitative, factors.
Year
DOI
Venue
2005
10.1207/s15516709cog0000_33
COGNITIVE SCIENCE
Keywords
Field
DocType
abstract concepts,concreteness,feature analysis,concept representation
Abstract and concrete,Concreteness,Context effect,Concept learning,Cognitive psychology,Psychology,Psycholinguistics,Semantics,Instrumental and intrinsic value,Pattern recognition (psychology)
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
29
5.0
0364-0213
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
18
1.51
0
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Katja Katja Wiemer-Hastings1181.51
Xu Xu2182.87