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Updated: Dec 9, 2025
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Eye Tracking During Visually Situated Language Comprehension: Flexibility and Limitations in Uncovering Visual Context Effects
Published on: November 30, 2018
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Does visualisation help or hinder concrete word processing?
Simritpal Kaur Malhi1, Cassidy Kost1, Lori Buchanan1
1Department of Psychology, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (2006)
|September 14, 2020
Summary
Participants showed an advantage for abstract word pairs in an iconicity task. This suggests abstract words are processed intuitively, while concrete words are processed visually, a finding supported by visual aid experiments.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Linguistics
- Semantics
Background:
- Iconicity in language refers to the perceived natural resemblance between a word's form and its meaning.
- Previous research noted an abstractness effect, where abstract word pairs are judged faster than concrete ones.
- A proposed explanation involves differential processing strategies: visual/imaginative for concrete words and intuitive/emotional for abstract words.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the processing strategies underlying the abstractness effect in iconicity judgments.
- To test the hypothesis that concrete words engage visual-spatial processing, while abstract words engage intuitive processing.
- To explore the grounding of abstract words through their association with social norms and values.
Main Methods:
- Experiment 1: Assessed participants' self-reported strategies (visualisation vs. intuitive) for concrete and abstract word pairs.
- Experiment 2: Introduced visual aids (pictures) to facilitate concrete word processing and measured task performance.
- Experiment 3: Manipulated the relevance of visual aids to examine their impact on accuracy and processing.
Main Results:
- Participants predominantly used visualisation for concrete words and intuitive processing for abstract words.
- Visual aids significantly improved speed and accuracy for concrete word processing.
- Accuracy improved only when visual aids correctly depicted the iconic spatial arrangement of word pairs.
Conclusions:
- The abstractness effect is mediated by distinct processing strategies for concrete and abstract words.
- A novel Flexible Abstractness and Concreteness Effects (FACE) theory is proposed, integrating symbolic and embodied perspectives.
- FACE theory introduces concepts like direct/constrained imageability for concrete words and indirect/free imageability for abstract words.
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