Implicit effect of abstract/concrete components in the categorization of Chinese words

ABSTRACT

This study extends the examination of the difference between abstract concepts to the Chinese language and its peculiar characteristics in word formation, where components with different semantic content might be aggregated within a word. Native Chinese speakers categorised abstract and concrete words by moving the computer mouse towards their choice. Stimuli with a “semantically simple structure” (i.e. abstract-abstract/concrete-concrete) were compared with those with a “mixed structure” (i.e. abstract-concrete/concrete-abstract) to test for an effect of the conceptual content of the stimulus’s components on its overall processing. Response time and kinematic parameters revealed that: a) the semantic content of the components affected the processing of abstract but not concrete concepts, b) concepts differed when they have a semantically mixed structure, not a simple one. We extend the concreteness effect to logographic script and provide evidence that the presence of a concrete component within an abstract concept is elaborated and affects its processing.

KEYWORDS:

• Abstract concept
• semantic categorization
• Chinese characters
• embodied cognition
• mousetracker

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We grouped the components on the basis of the semantic categories to which radicals belong. For example, in the case of "heart", we included it in the abstract categories because as a radical it belongs to the domain of emotions’

2 The pictograms we reported might not seem similar to their referents, but they are the product of a transformation that occurred over the years. For example, 山shān (mountain) should represent a mountain with three peaks, whereas目mù (eye) is a schematic representation of an eye, with the two eyelids.

3 In studies that require a motor response (button press or mouse tracker) with two response options, their position is usually counterbalanced. Here, the 'abstract' response was always on the left, the 'concrete' response always on the right. This is a potential flaw in the study. However, to the best of our knowledge, there are no studies that have precisely measured motion bias due to the position of the responses. In Wirth et al. (2020) it is recommended to place the answers as far as possible from the starting position of the mouse (i.e., Top right and top left corners of the screen), but no information is provided on the difference between the left and the right positions. Additionally, the potential bias (if any) might affect the main effect of the semantic category, with reduced influence on the main effect of the morphological category and the interaction between the two. Given all the above, we consider our results reliable.