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Semantic Size of Abstract Concepts: It Gets Emotional When You Can’t See It.

Yao, Bo, Vasiljevic, Milica, Weick, Mario, Sereno, Margaret E., O'Donnell, Patrick J., Sereno, Sara C. (2013) Semantic Size of Abstract Concepts: It Gets Emotional When You Can’t See It. PLoS ONE, 8 (9). e75000. ISSN 1932-6203. (doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0075000) (KAR id:35609)

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.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1371/journal.pone.0075000
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Psychology
Depositing User: M.L. Barnoux
Date Deposited: 24 Oct 2013 10:04 UTC
Last Modified: 05 Nov 2024 10:19 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/35609 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Weick, Mario.

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