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A context-sensitive and non-linguistic approach to abstract concepts.
Peter Langland-Hassan1, Charles P Davis2
1Department of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, 45219, OH, USA.
Summary
Researchers explored abstract concept evaluation, finding current non-verbal methods insufficient. A new measure, "trial concreteness," better assesses abstract conceptual abilities in categorization tasks.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Philosophy of Mind
Background:
- Empirical study of abstract concepts faces foundational challenges.
- Assessing abstract conceptual abilities non-verbally, without language, is difficult.
- Existing non-verbal categorization tasks may not accurately measure abstract concept understanding.
Purpose of the Study:
- To critically evaluate current conceptions of abstractness in concept research.
- To propose a novel framework for understanding abstractness in categorization.
- To investigate the relationship between this new framework and task performance.
Main Methods:
- Distinguished two common views of concept abstractness.
- Argued these views do not adequately capture non-verbal categorization requirements.
- Introduced and validated the 'trial concreteness' conception.
Main Results:
- Neither of the two common conceptions of abstractness reliably predicts success in non-verbal categorization.
- 'Trial concreteness,' keyed to individual trials, better reflects context-dependent abstraction.
- This new measure correlates with participant success in experiments.
Conclusions:
- Current non-verbal methods for assessing abstract concepts are potentially flawed.
- The proposed 'trial concreteness' offers a more nuanced and accurate approach.
- This framework advances the empirical study of abstract conceptual abilities.
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