Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology, and Health Studies, Sapienza University of Rome, 00185, Rome, Italy.
Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, Italian National Research Council, 00185, Rome, Italy.
Psychol Res. 2022 Nov;86(8):2370-2388. doi: 10.1007/s00426-022-01698-4.
There is a longstanding and widely held misconception about the relative remoteness of abstract concepts from concrete experiences. This review examines the current evidence for external influences and internal constraints on the processing, representation, and use of abstract concepts, like truth, friendship, and number. We highlight the theoretical benefit of distinguishing between grounded and embodied cognition and then ask which roles do perception, action, language, and social interaction play in acquiring, representing and using abstract concepts. By reviewing several studies, we show that they are, against the accepted definition, not detached from perception and action. Focussing on magnitude-related concepts, we also discuss evidence for cultural influences on abstract knowledge and explore how internal processes such as inner speech, metacognition, and inner bodily signals (interoception) influence the acquisition and retrieval of abstract knowledge. Finally, we discuss some methodological developments. Specifically, we focus on the importance of studies that investigate the time course of conceptual processing and we argue that, because of the paramount role of sociality for abstract concepts, new methods are necessary to study concepts in interactive situations. We conclude that bodily, linguistic, and social constraints provide important theoretical limitations for our theories of conceptual knowledge.
人们对抽象概念与具体经验之间的相对距离存在长期而广泛的误解。这篇综述考察了当前关于抽象概念（如真理、友谊和数字）的加工、表示和使用受到外部影响和内部限制的证据。我们强调了区分基于身体的认知和具身认知的理论益处，然后探讨了感知、行动、语言和社会互动在获取、表示和使用抽象概念方面所扮演的角色。通过回顾几项研究，我们表明它们与感知和行动没有脱离，这与公认的定义相悖。我们集中讨论了与数量相关的概念的文化影响的证据，并探讨了内部过程（如内部言语、元认知和内部身体信号（内感受））如何影响抽象知识的获取和检索。最后，我们讨论了一些方法学的发展。具体来说，我们专注于研究概念加工时间进程的研究的重要性，并认为，由于社会性对于抽象概念至关重要，因此需要新的方法来研究互动情境中的概念。我们的结论是，身体、语言和社会的限制为我们的概念知识理论提供了重要的理论限制。
