Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Abstract And Concrete Concepts According To Word Association, Daniel Nedjadrasul

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In psychology, the abstract/concrete distinction refers to a distinction among concepts, which is typically characterized as follows. Concrete concepts are those whose referents can be experienced through sensation/perception, such as dog or pond, whereas abstract concepts are those whose referents lack this attribute, such as truth (Wiemer-Hastings & Xu, 2005; Connell & Lynott, 2012; Brysbaert, Warriner, & Kuperman, 2014). This thesis describes and, using word association, tests several theories of conceptual representation motivated by the abstract/concrete distinction (or, where not motivated by it, with potential implications related to it). These include Dual Coding Theory (Paivio, 1986, 2007), Perceptual Symbol …