Semantic size of abstract concepts: It gets emotional when you can't see it

Yao, B.; Vasiljevic, M.; Weick, M.; Sereno, M.E.; O'Donnell, P.J.; Sereno, S.C.

Abstract

Size is an important visuo-spatial characteristic of the physical world. In language processing, previous research has demonstrated a processing advantage for words denoting semantically “big” (e.g., jungle) versus “small” (e.g., needle) concrete objects. We investigated whether semantic size plays a role in the recognition of words expressing abstract concepts (e.g., truth). Semantically “big” and “small” concrete and abstract words were presented in a lexical decision task. Responses to “big” words, regardless of their concreteness, were faster than those to “small” words. Critically, we explored the relationship between semantic size and affective characteristics of words as well as their influence on lexical access. Although a word’s semantic size was correlated with its emotional arousal, the temporal locus of arousal effects may depend on the level of concreteness. That is, arousal seemed to have an earlier (lexical) effect on abstract words, but a later (post-lexical) effect on concrete words. Our findings provide novel insights into the semantic representations of size in abstract concepts and highlight that affective attributes of words may not always index lexical access.

Citation

Yao, B., Vasiljevic, M., Weick, M., Sereno, M., O'Donnell, P., & Sereno, S. (2013). Semantic size of abstract concepts: It gets emotional when you can't see it. PLoS ONE, 8(9), Article e75000. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0075000

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 8, 2013
• Online Publication Date: Sep 25, 2013
• Publication Date: Sep 25, 2013
• Deposit Date: Sep 12, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 18, 2018
• Journal: PLoS ONE
• Electronic ISSN: 1932-6203
• Publisher: Public Library of Science
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 8
• Issue: 9
• Article Number: e75000
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0075000
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1314897
• Related Public URLs: http://kar.kent.ac.uk/35609/