Concepts Are Restructured During Language Contact: The Birth of Blue and Other Color Concepts in Tsimane'-Spanish Bilinguals.

Words and the concepts they represent vary across languages. Here we ask if mother-tongue concepts are altered by learning a second language. What happens when speakers of Tsimane', a language with few consensus color terms, learn Bolivian Spanish, a language with more terms? Three possibilities arise: Concepts in Tsimane' may remain unaffected, or they may be remapped, either by Tsimane' terms taking on new meanings or by borrowing Bolivian-Spanish terms. We found that adult bilingual speakers (n = 30) remapped Tsimane' concepts without importing Bolivian-Spanish terms into Tsimane'. All Tsimane' terms become more precise; for example, concepts of monolingual shandyes and yushñus (~green or blue, used synonymously by Tsimane' monolinguals; n = 71) come to reflect the Bolivian-Spanish distinction of verde (~green) and azul (~blue). These results show that learning a second language can change the concepts in the first language.

The neurophysiological mechanism of valence-space congruency effect: evidence from spatial Stroop task and event-related EEG features.

Metaphors commonly represent mental representations of abstract concepts. One example is the valence-space metaphor (i.e., positive word-up, negative word-down), which suggests that the vertical position of positive/negative words can modulate the evaluation of word valence. Here, the spatial Stroop task and electroencephalography (EEG) techniques were used to explore the neural mechanism of the valence-space congruency effect in valence-space metaphors. This study showed that the reaction time of the congruent condition (i.e., positive words at the top and negative words at the bottom of the screen) was significantly shorter than that of the incongruent condition (i.e., positive words at the bottom and negative words at the top of the screen), while the accuracy rate of the congruent condition was significantly larger than that of the incongruent condition. The analysis of the amplitudes of event-related potential components revealed that congruency between the vertical position and valence of Chinese words could significantly modulate the amplitude of attention allocation-related P2 component and semantic violations related N400 component. Moreover, statistical tests conducted on the post-stimulus inter-trial phase coherence (ITPC) found that the ITPC value of an alpha band region of interest (8-12 Hz, 100-300 ms post-stimulus) in the time-frequency plane of the congruent condition was significantly larger than that of the incongruent condition. Above all, the current study proved the existence of the space-valence congruency effect in Chinese words and provided some interesting neurophysiological mechanisms regarding the valence-space metaphor.

The Influence of Emotional Experience on Semantic Processing of Concrete Concepts.

Introduction: Parallel distributed processing theory (PDP theory) holds that all brain regions involved in conceptual representation perform a series of activities at the same time. However, the role of emotional experience information in concrete conceptual representation is still unknown. This study further explores whether the emotional experience will also affect the semantic processing of concrete concept representations. Methods: This study used the emotion priming paradigm and semantic judgment task to explore whether emotion priming impacts the processing of animal concepts with different emotional experiences through two experiments. In Experiments 1a and 1b, pleasant or disgusted faces were used as emotional priming stimuli to explore whether the explicit processing of emotions would affect the semantic processing of animal concepts. Experiments 2a and 2b used positive or negative scenery pictures as emotional priming stimuli to explore whether the implicit processing of emotions would affect the semantic processing of animal concepts. Results: The Experiment 1 results showed that the perception of faces promotes the processing of animal words, showing the "word-emotion congruence effect". Experiment 2a did not show the expected results, while Experiment 2b showed that the general negative perception of scenery pictures could significantly promote the processing of disgusted animal words. The results further proved the "word-emotion congruence effect" shown in the results of Experiment 1 from the perspective of implicit emotion processing. Combining the results of two experiments, it can be proven that emotional experience affects the semantic processing process of concrete concepts. Discussion: Both Experiment 1 and Experiment 2b of this study show the "word-emotion congruence effect". PDP theory believes that conceptual representation is represented by the activity patterns of billions of neurons distributed in many areas of the brain, and related semantic processing and sensory processing will occur simultaneously. The results of this experiment well support PDP theory.

Cognitive Linguistics: Analysis of Mapping Knowledge Domains.

Language acquisition, processing, comprehension, and production encompass a complex mechanism. Particularly, the mechanisms by which we make sense of language, including perception, conceptualization, and processing, have been controversial topics among cognitive linguists and researchers in cognitive sciences. Cognitive processes such as attention, thought, perception, and memory play a significant role in meaningful human communication. This study aimed to apply the science mapping method to detect and visualize emerging trends and patterns in literature pertaining to cognitive linguistics. In order to accomplish this, eight bibliometric and eight scientometric indicators were used in conjunction with CiteSpace 5.8.R3 and VOSviewer 1.6.18 for scientometric analysis and data visualisation. The data were collected and triangulated from three databases, including 2380 from Scopus, 1732 from WOS, and 9911 from Lens from 1969 to 2022. Among the findings were the visualization of eight bibliometric indicators regarding the knowledge production size of cognitive linguistics based on year, country, university, journal, publisher, research area, authors, and cited documents. Second, we presented scientometric indicators with regard to cognitive linguistics development, including the most important authors in the field, co-citation networks, citation networks, sigma metrics to detect works with potential citation growth, and clusters to group related topics to cognitive linguistics. We conclude the study by emphasizing that cognitive linguistics has evolved from the micro level where it focused on studying cognitive aspects of language in relation to time, language, and modality dimensions, to the macro level, which examines cognitive processes and their relationship to the construction of meaningful communication using both sensation and perception.

A test of indirect grounding of abstract concepts using multimodal distributional semantics.

How are abstract concepts grounded in perceptual experiences for shaping human conceptual knowledge? Recent studies on abstract concepts emphasizing the role of language have argued that abstract concepts are grounded indirectly in perceptual experiences and language (or words) functions as a bridge between abstract concepts and perceptual experiences. However, this "indirect grounding" view remains largely speculative and has hardly been supported directly by empirical evidence. In this paper, therefore, we test the indirect grounding view by means of multimodal distributional semantics, in which the meaning of a word (i.e., a concept) is represented as the combination of textual and visual vectors. The newly devised multimodal distributional semantic model incorporates the indirect grounding view by computing the visual vector of an abstract word through the visual vectors of concrete words semantically related to that abstract word. An evaluation experiment is conducted in which conceptual representation is predicted from multimodal vectors using a multilayer feed-forward neural network. The analysis of prediction performance demonstrates that the indirect grounding model achieves significantly better performance in predicting human conceptual representation of abstract words than other models that mimic competing views on abstract concepts, especially than the direct grounding model in which the visual vectors of abstract words are computed directly from the images of abstract concepts. This result lends some plausibility to the indirect grounding view as a cognitive mechanism of grounding abstract concepts.

Self-Reported Depression Is Associated With Aberration in Emotional Reactivity and Emotional Concept Coding.

Cognitive impairment, alterations in mood, emotion dysregulation are just a few of the consequences of depression. Despite depression being reported as the most common mental disorder worldwide, examining depression or risks of depression is still challenging. Emotional reactivity has been observed to predict the risk of depression, but the results have been mixed for negative emotional reactivity (NER). To better understand the emotional response conflict, we asked our participants to describe their feeling in meaningful sentences alongside reporting their reactions to the emotionally evocative words. We presented a word on the screen and asked participants to perform two tasks, rate their feeling after reading the word using the self-assessment manikin (SAM) scale, and describe their feeling using the property generation task. The emotional content was analyzed using a novel machine-learning algorithm approach. We performed these two tasks in blocks and randomized their order across participants. Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) was used to categorize participants into self-reported non-depressed (ND) and depressed (D) groups. Compared to the ND, the D group reported reduced positive emotional reactivity when presented with extremely pleasant words regardless of their arousal levels. However, no significant difference was observed between the D and ND groups for negative emotional reactivity. In contrast, we observed increased sadness and inclination toward low negative context from descriptive content by the D compared to the ND group. The positive content analyses showed mixed results. The contrasting results between the emotional reactivity and emotional content analyses demand further examination between cohorts of self-reported depressive symptoms, no-symptoms, and MDD patients to better examine the risks of depression and help design early interventions.

Differences related to aging in sensorimotor knowledge: Investigation of perceptual strength and body object interaction.

Embodied approach postulates that knowledge and conceptual representations are grounded in action and perception. In order to investigate the involvement of sensorimotor information in conceptual and cognitive processing, researchers have collected various norms in young adults. For instance, the perceptual strength (PS) assesses perceptual experience (i.e. visual, auditory, haptic, gustatory, olfactory) associated with a concept and the body-object-interaction (BOI) assesses the ease with which a human body can interact with the referent of a word. The importance of both BOI and PS in the multimodal composition of word meaning is today well recognized. However, given the sensorimotor development of the individual from childhood to later life, it is likely that different age periods are associated with different perceptual experience and capacity to interact with objects. The purpose of this research is to investigate exploratory the effect of age on PS and BOI by comparing the evaluation of 270 French language words by young adults and healthy older people. The results showed that older adults presented similar or even higher PS for some modalities (e.g. gustatory and olfactory) and in particular for certain categories of words, while the BOI decreases. In addition to the importance of adjusting the verbal stimuli used in aging studies when dealing with multimodal representations, our results will lead us to discuss the evolution of sensorimotor representations with age.

Context free and context-dependent conceptual representation in the brain.

How concepts are coded in the brain is a core issue in cognitive neuroscience. Studies have focused on how individual concepts are processed, but the way in which conceptual representation changes to suit the context is unclear. We parametrically manipulated the association strength between words, presented in pairs one word at a time using a slow event-related fMRI design. We combined representational similarity analysis and computational linguistics to probe the neurocomputational content of these trials. Individual word meaning was maintained in supramarginal gyrus (associated with verbal short-term memory) when items were judged to be unrelated, but not when a linking context was retrieved. Context-dependent meaning was instead represented in left lateral prefrontal gyrus (associated with controlled retrieval), angular gyrus, and ventral temporal lobe (regions associated with integrative aspects of memory). Analyses of informational connectivity, examining the similarity of activation patterns across trials between sites, showed that control network regions had more similar multivariate responses across trials when association strength was weak, reflecting a common controlled retrieval state when the task required more unusual associations. These findings indicate that semantic control and representational sites amplify contextually relevant meanings in trials judged to be related.

The Formal Structure of Kind Representations.

Kind representations, concepts like table, triangle, dog, and planet, underlie generic language. Here, we investigate the formal structure of kind representations-the structure that distinguishes kind representations from other types of representations. The present studies confirm that participants distinguish generic-supporting properties of individuals (e.g., this watch is made of steel) and accidental properties (e.g., this watch is on the nightstand). Furthermore, work dating back to Aristotle establishes that only some generic-supporting properties bear a principled connection to the kind, that is, are true of an individual by virtue of its being a member of a specific kind (e.g., telling time for a watch). The present studies tested the hypothesis that principled connections are part of the formal structure of kind representations. Specifically, they tested whether they structure a newly learned kind representation. Experiment 1 found that introducing a property of a newly encountered novel kind in any one of four linguistic frames that provide evidence that a property has a principled connection to a kind (e.g., "It has fur because it is a blick") led participants to infer a different conceptual consequence of principled connections (i.e., "There is something wrong with this blick, which does not have fur") for which they had no direct evidence. Two introduction frames that provided no evidence for principled connections (e.g., "Almost all blicks have fur") did not generate the same consequence. Experiment 2 found that all of the targeted properties were generic licensing, irrespective of the introduction frame. That the distinction between properties that bear principled connections to their kinds, and merely generic-supporting properties structures novel kind representations, provides strong evidence that this distinction is part of the formal structure of kind representations.

The physical basis of conceptual representation - An addendum to.

Gallistel (2020) argues that current research on the physical basis of memory assumes an associationistic approach and thus fails to provide an account of quantitative facts because quantitative facts cannot be sensed and have no qualia. But are these approaches any better suited for investigating how we store concepts of concrete things such as dogs, tables and sand, which clearly have qualia? Seven examples of the abstract quantitative and non-quantitative formal structure found in the conceptual representation of concrete things are used to show that Gallistel's critique clearly extends to the conceptual representations stored in semantic memory. Gallistel (2020) presents compelling arguments that the physical basis for quantitative facts will not be the synapse or cell assemblies, but the information-bearing molecules inside the neuron. Given that quantitative facts are intrinsic to even our simplest conceptual representations, we should expect the same for conceptual representations.

Strawberries and Cream: The Relationship Between Food Rejection and Thematic Knowledge of Food in Young Children.

Establishing healthy dietary habits in childhood is crucial in preventing long-term repercussions, as a lack of dietary variety in childhood leads to enduring impacts on both physical and cognitive health. Poor conceptual knowledge about food has recently been shown to be a driving factor of food rejection. The majority of studies that have investigated the development of food knowledge along with food rejection have mainly focused on one subtype of conceptual knowledge about food, namely taxonomic categories (e.g., vegetables or meat). However, taxonomic categorization is not the only way to understand the food domain. We also heavily rely on other conceptual structures, namely thematic associations, in which objects are grouped because they share spatial-temporal properties or exhibit a complementary relationship (e.g., soft-boiled egg and soldiers). We rely on such thematic associations between food items, which may not fall into the same taxon, to determine the acceptability of food combinations. However, the development of children's ability to master these relations has not been systematically investigated, nor alongside the phenomenon of food rejection. The present research aims to fill this gap by investigating (i) the development of conceptual food knowledge (both taxonomic and thematic) and (ii) the putative relationship between children's food rejection (as measured by the Child Food Rejection Scale) and both thematic and taxonomic food knowledge. A proportional (A:B::C:?) analogy task, with a choice between taxonomic (i.e., bread and pasta) and thematic (i.e., bread and butter) food associates, was conducted on children between 3 and 7-years-old (n = 85). The children were systematically presented with either a thematic or taxonomic food base pair (A:B) and then asked to extend the example type of relation to select the respective thematic or taxonomic match to the target (C:?). Our results revealed, for the first time, that increased levels of food rejection were significantly predictive of poorer food identification and decreased thematic understanding. These findings entitle us to hypothesize that knowledge-based food education programs to foster dietary variety in young children, should not only aim to improve taxonomic understanding of food, but also thematic relations.

Exploring What Is Encoded in Distributional Word Vectors: A Neurobiologically Motivated Analysis.

The pervasive use of distributional semantic models or word embeddings for both cognitive modeling and practical application is because of their remarkable ability to represent the meanings of words. However, relatively little effort has been made to explore what types of information are encoded in distributional word vectors. Knowing the internal knowledge embedded in word vectors is important for cognitive modeling using distributional semantic models. Therefore, in this paper, we attempt to identify the knowledge encoded in word vectors by conducting a computational experiment using Binder et al.'s (2016) featural conceptual representations based on neurobiologically motivated attributes. In an experiment, these conceptual vectors are predicted from text-based word vectors using a neural network and linear transformation, and prediction performance is compared among various types of information. The analysis demonstrates that abstract information is generally predicted more accurately by word vectors than perceptual and spatiotemporal information, and specifically, the prediction accuracy of cognitive and social information is higher. Emotional information is also found to be successfully predicted for abstract words. These results indicate that language can be a major source of knowledge about abstract attributes, and they support the recent view that emphasizes the importance of language for abstract concepts. Furthermore, we show that word vectors can capture some types of perceptual and spatiotemporal information about concrete concepts and some relevant word categories. This suggests that language statistics can encode more perceptual knowledge than often expected.

Core features: measures and characterization for different languages.

According to the feature-based view of semantic representation, concepts can be represented as distributed networks of semantic features, which contribute with different weights to determine the overall meaning of a concept. The study of semantic features, typically collected in property generation tasks, is enriched with measures indicating the informativeness and distinctiveness of a given feature for the related concepts. However, while these measures have been provided in several languages (e.g. Italian, Spanish and English), they have hardly been applied comparatively across languages. The purpose of this paper is to investigate language-related differences and similarities emerging from the semantic representation of aggregated core features. Features with higher salience for a set of concrete concepts are identified and described in terms of their feature type. Then, comparisons are made between domains (natural vs. artefacts) and languages (Italian, Spanish and English) and descriptive statistics are provided. These results show that the characterization of concrete concepts is overall fairly stable across languages, although interesting cross-linguistic differences emerged. We will discuss the implications of our findings in relation to the theoretical paradigm of semantic feature norms, as well as in relation to speakers' mutual understanding in multilingual settings.

The modality switching costs of Chinese-English bilinguals in the processing of L1 and L2.

Modality switching cost indicates that people's performance becomes worse when they judge sequential information that is related to different sensory modalities than judging information that is related to the same modality. In this study, we conducted three experiments on proficient and non-proficient bilingual individuals to investigate the modality switching costs in L1 and L2 processing separately. In Experiment 1, materials were L1 and L2 words that were either conceptually related to a visual modality (e.g., light) or related to an auditory modality (e.g., song). The modality switching costs were investigated in a lexical decision task in both L1 and L2. Experiment 2 further explored the modality switching costs while weakening the activation level of the perceptual modality by adding a set of fillers. Experiment 3 used a word-naming task to explore the modality switching effect in language production in L1 and L2. Results of these experiments showed that the modality switching costs appeared in both language comprehension and production in L1 and L2 conditions. The magnitude of the modality switching costs was conditionally modulated by the L2 proficiency level, such as in the L2 condition in Experiment 1 and in both L1 and L2 conditions in Experiment 3. These results suggest that sensorimotor simulation is involved in not only language comprehension but also language production. The sensorimotor simulation that is acquired in L1 can be transferred to L2.

Q Methodology: An interesting strategy for concept profile and sensory description of low sodium salted meat.

The conceptual representation and sensory profiling of low sodium salted meat containing different flavor enhancers (n = 9) were investigated using the Q methodology. Seventy consumers performed a Q-sorting task having in mind the health concept, using a hedonic test and sensory description of the samples. Regular sodium salted meats were associated to the health concept and were characterized by as too much salt, fatty, salty taste, strange taste, and high blood pressure, while the low-sodium samples were associated with good appearance, metallic taste, and healthy. The Health questionnaire showed it is a valorization of food with improved sensory characteristics in addition and the importance of physical and emotional health. Our findings suggested the Q methodology can be an interesting tool for meat processors, together with the traditional sensory test with consumers, to obtain more consistent and complementary information about meat products.

A Multiple Definitions Model of Classification Into Fuzzy Categories.

This paper describes a new hypothesis, referred to as the multiple definitions model, concerning the mental representation of fuzzy concepts. The basic claim of the model is that such concepts are represented as a set of multiple definitions, where each definition is exact. Fuzziness results from the fact that using such concepts requires sampling multiple such exact definitions of the concept. The model was applied to concepts that can be defined as a range of values over a single dimension (such as middle-age), and tested using conjunctions and disjunctions of middle-age (e.g., "A person is middle-aged at both 50 and 63."). The model predicts that, controlling for the truths of individual ages, the truths of conjunctions involving ages that are close together will be judged higher than the truths of conjunctions involving ages farther apart, and that the opposite effect will occur for disjunctions (the distance effect). The results of two experiments confirmed this prediction. However, both experiments also found that conjunctions were judged truer than the less true of their component ages, and that disjunctions were judged less true than the truer of their component ages. The model does not predict this "minimax" effect. One possible explanation of the minimax effect was tested; another modeled. The overall conclusion is that the multiple definitions model is a viable contender to explain the distance effect. The minimax effect, however, is still in need of a satisfactory explanation.

Instance-of-object-kind representations.

We naturally think and talk about the objects we encounter as instances of one or another kind of object (e.g. as a dog). This paper makes a proposal concerning the instance-of-object-kind representations that allow us to think of things as instances of object kinds and investigates two predictions of the proposed representations. Instance-of-object-kind representations represent an object as one of indefinitely many instances of a given object kind. In so doing, they implicate a uniqueness-in-kind constraint which represents an object as unique within a kind, by distinguishing the instance-of-object-kind representation of an object from instance-of-object-kind representations of other actually as well as potentially existing instances of that object kind. The uniqueness-in-kind constraint predicts that a given instance of an object kind cannot be transformed into a different potentially existing instance of the same kind, but allows the object to be transformed into a potentially existing instance of a different object kind. Instance-of-object-kind representations also implicate a mode-of-existence constraint whereby actually existing instances of an object kind are represented as being distinct from all actually existing instances of that kind and other object kinds. This constraint predicts that participants should reject the possibility of transforming an actually existing instance of an object kind into an actually existing instance of the same or different object kind. Five experiments provide evidence for these constraints. In so doing, the experiments provide evidence for the formal characteristics of the proposed instance-of-object-kind representations that guide our thinking about things as instances of object kinds.

The role of causal beliefs in political identity and voting.

An emerging literature in psychology and political science has identified political identity as an important driver of political decisions. However, less is known about how a person's political identity is incorporated into their broader self-concept and why it influences some people more than others. We examined the role of political identity in representations of the self-concept as one determinant of people's political behaviors. We tested the predictions of a recent theoretical account of self-concept representation that, inspired by work on conceptual representation, emphasizes the role of causal beliefs. This account predicts that people who believe that their political identity is causally central (linked to many other features of the self-concept) will be more likely to engage in behaviors consistent with their political identity than those who believe that the same aspect is causally peripheral (linked to fewer other features). Consistent with these predictions, in a study run when political identity was particularly salient-during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election-we found that U.S. voters who believed their political party identity was more causally central (vs. those who believe it was causally peripheral) were more likely to vote for their political party's candidate. Further, in two studies, we found that U.K. residents who believed that their English or British national identity was more causally central were more likely to support the U.K. leaving the European Union (Brexit) than those who believed the same identities were more causally peripheral.

Reconsidering unconscious persistence: Suppressing unwanted memories reduces their indirect expression in later thoughts.

When we seek to forget unwelcome memories, does the suppressed content still exert an unconscious influence on our thoughts? Although intentionally stopping retrieval of a memory reduces later episodic retention for the suppressed trace, it remains unclear the extent to which suppressed content persists in indirectly influencing mental processes. Here we tested whether inhibitory control processes underlying retrieval suppression alter the influence of a memory's underlying semantic content on later thought. To achieve this, across two experiments, we tested whether suppressing episodic retrieval of to-be-excluded memories reduced the indirect expression of the unwanted content on an apparently unrelated test of problem solving: the remote associates test (RAT). Experiment 1 found that suppressed content was less likely than unsuppressed content to emerge as solutions to RAT problems. Indeed, suppression abolished evidence of conceptual priming, even when participants reported no awareness of the relationship between the memory and the problem solving tasks. Experiment 2 replicated this effect and also found that directing participants to use explicit memory to solve RAT problems eliminated suppression effects. Experiment 2 thus rules out the possibility that suppression effects reflect contamination by covert explicit retrieval strategies. Together, our results indicate that inhibitory control processes underlying retrieval suppression not only disrupt episodic retention, but also reduce the indirect influence of suppressed semantic content during unrelated thought processes. Considered with other recent demonstrations of implicit suppression effects, these findings indicate that historical assumptions about the persisting influence of suppressed thoughts on mental health require closer empirical scrutiny and need to be reconsidered.

Cultural differences in conceptual representation of "Privacy": A comparison between Iran and the United States.

Culture consists of shared conceptual representations in an individual's cognition. Thus, there may be cultural differences in the representation of a concept. To assess this possibility, we compared the subjective semantic structure of "privacy" in Iran and the United States. Participants were 200 adults, 100 from Iran and 100 from the United States. In the first phase of the experiment, using the associative terms task, we detected nine of the most frequent terms that were associated with the concept of "privacy" in each culture. In the second phase, using the judged-similarity task, we asked participants to rate the degree to which each of the nine terms from the previous phase was associated with every other term and with the concept of "privacy." Results from a correspondence analysis model suggest similarities in the mapping of terms related to "privacy" along the dichotomous dimension of physical vs. informational concerns. However, cultural differences emerged in a second dimension, the extent to which individualism vs. collectivism was stressed. While "personal privacy" and an individual's relationship with the government was important for American adults, the main focus for Iranian adults was "familial privacy" and family-centered living.