Effects of context on processing emotionally neutral abstract and concrete concepts

• Liusheng Wang

  East China Normal University and Nantong University

• Hongmei Qiu

  Nantong University

• Jianjun Yin

  Jackson State University

The abstractness effect describes the phenomenon of individuals processing abstract concepts faster and more accurately than they process concrete concepts. In this study, we explored the effects of context on how 43 college students processed words, controlling for the emotional valence of the words. The participants performed a lexical decision task in which they were shown individual abstract and concrete words, or abstract and concrete words embedded in sentences. The results showed that in the word-context condition the participants’ processing of concrete concepts improved, whereas in the sentence-context condition their processing of abstract concepts improved. These findings support the embodied cognition theory of concept processing.

1. Liusheng Wang, East China Normal University and Nantong University
   School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, and Department of Psychology
2. Hongmei Qiu, Nantong University
   Department of Psychology
3. Jianjun Yin, Jackson State University
   Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education

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