Imaginative Language: What Event-Related Potentials have Revealed about the Nature and Source of Concreteness Effects

Behavioral and neuropsychological evidence suggest that abstract and concrete concepts may be represented, retrieved, and processed differently in the human brain. As reviewed in this paper, data using event-related potential measures, some in combination with visual half-field presentation methods, have offered a detailed picture of the nature and source of concreteness effects. In particular, the results provide strong evidence for multiple mechanisms underlying the behavioral processing differences that have long been noted for concrete and abstract words and, further, suggest an intriguing, unique role for the right hemisphere in associating words with sensory imagery.