Metacognition and abstract concepts

Mapping semantic space: Exploring the higher-order structure of word meaning

Multiple representation theories posit that concepts are represented via a combination of properties derived from sensorimotor, affective, and linguistic experiences. Recently, it has been proposed that information derived from social experience, or socialness, represents another key aspect of conceptual representation. How these various dimensions interact to form a coherent conceptual space has yet to be fully explored. To address this, we capitalized on openly available word property norms for 6339 words and conducted a large-scale investigation into the relationships between 18 dimensions. An exploratory factor analysis reduced the dimensions to six higher-order factors: sub-lexical, distributional, visuotactile, body action, affective and social interaction. All these factors explained unique variance in performance on lexical and semantic tasks, demonstrating that they make important contributions to the representation of word meaning. An important and novel finding was that the socialness dimension clustered with the auditory modality and with mouth and head actions. We suggest this reflects experiential learning from verbal interpersonal interactions. Moreover, formally modelling the network structure of semantic space revealed pairwise partial correlations between most dimensions and highlighted the centrality of the interoception dimension. Altogether, these findings provide new insights into the architecture of conceptual space, including the importance of inner and social experience, and highlight promising avenues for future research.

Brain-wide representation of social knowledge

Understanding how the human brain maps different dimensions of social conceptualizations remains a key unresolved issue. We performed a functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study in which participants were exposed to audio definitions of personality traits and asked to simulate experiences associated with the concepts. Half of the concepts were affective (e.g. empathetic), and the other half were non-affective (e.g. intelligent). Orthogonally, half of the concepts were highly likable (e.g. sincere) and half were socially undesirable (e.g. liar). Behaviourally, we observed that the dimension of social desirability reflected the participant's subjective ratings better than affect. FMRI decoding results showed that both social desirability and affect could be decoded in local patterns of activity through distributed brain regions including the superior temporal, inferior frontal, precuneus and key nodes of the default mode network in posterior/anterior cingulate and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Decoding accuracy was better for social desirability than affect. A representational similarity analysis further demonstrated that a deep language model significantly predicted brain activity associated with the concepts in bilateral regions of superior and anterior temporal lobes. The results demonstrate a brain-wide representation of social knowledge, involving default model network systems that support the multimodal simulation of social experience, with a further reliance on language-related preprocessing.

The neural basis of naturalistic semantic and social cognition

Decoding social environments and engaging meaningfully with other people are critical aspects of human cognition. Multiple cognitive systems, including social and semantic cognition, work alongside each other to support these processes. This study investigated shared processing between social and semantic systems using neuroimaging data collected during movie-viewing, which captures the multimodal environment in which social knowledge is exchanged. Semantic and social content from movie events (event-level) and movie transcripts (word-level) were used in parametric modulation analyses to test (1) the degree to which semantic and social information is processed within each respective network and (2) engagement of the same cross-network regions or the same domain-general hub located within the semantic network during semantic and social processing. Semantic word and event-level content engaged the same fronto-temporo-parietal network and a portion of the semantic hub in the anterior temporal lobe (ATL). Social word and event-level content engaged the supplementary motor area and right angular gyrus within the social network, but only social words engaged the domain-general semantic hub in left ATL. There was evidence of shared processing between the social and semantic systems in the dorsolateral portion of right ATL which was engaged by word and event-level semantic and social content. Overlap between the semantic and social word and event results was highly variable within and across participants, with the most consistent loci of overlap occurring in left inferior frontal, bilateral precentral and supramarginal gyri for social and semantic words and in bilateral superior temporal gyrus extending from ATL posteriorly into supramarginal gyri for social and semantic events. These results indicate a complex pattern of shared and distinct regions for social and semantic cognition during naturalistic processing. PROTOCOL REGISTRATION: The stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on October 11, 2022. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/ACWQY .

Imagining the future self through thought experiments

The ability of the mind to conceptualize what is not present is essential. It allows us to reason counterfactually about what might have happened had events unfolded differently or had another course of action been taken. It allows us to think about what might happen - to perform 'Gedankenexperimente' (thought experiments) - before we act. However, the cognitive and neural mechanisms mediating this ability are poorly understood. We suggest that the frontopolar cortex (FPC) keeps track of and evaluates alternative choices (what we might have done), whereas the anterior lateral prefrontal cortex (alPFC) compares simulations of possible future scenarios (what we might do) and evaluates their reward values. Together, these brain regions support the construction of suppositional scenarios.

Mechanisms of alignment: shared control, social cognition and metacognition

In dialogue, speakers process a great deal of information, take and give the floor to each other, and plan and adjust their contributions on the fly. Despite the level of coordination and control that it requires, dialogue is the easiest way speakers possess to come to similar conceptualizations of the world. In this paper, we show how speakers align with each other by mutually controlling the flow of the dialogue and constantly monitoring their own and their interlocutors' way of representing information. Through examples of conversation, we introduce the notions of shared control, meta-representations of alignment and commentaries on alignment, and show how they support mutual understanding and the collaborative creation of abstract concepts. Indeed, whereas speakers can share similar representations of concrete concepts just by mutually attending to a tangible referent or by recalling it, they are likely to need more negotiation and mutual monitoring to build similar representations of abstract concepts. This article is part of the theme issue 'Concepts in interaction: social engagement and inner experiences'.

Olfactory abstraction: a communicative and metacognitive account

The usual puzzle raised about olfaction is that of a deficit of abstraction: smells, by contrast notably with colours, do not easily lend themselves to abstract categories and labels. Some studies have argued that the puzzle is culturally restricted and that abstraction is more common outside urban Western societies. Here, I argue that the puzzle is misconstrued and should be reversed: given that odours are constantly changing and that their commonalities are difficult for humans to identify, what is surprising is not that abstract terms are rare, but that they should be used at all for olfaction. Given the nature of the olfactory environment and our cognitive equipment, concrete labels referring to sources seem most adaptive. To explain the use and presence of abstract terms, we need to examine their social and communicative benefits. Here these benefits are spelt out as securing a higher agreement among individuals varying in their olfactory experiences as well as the labels they use, as well as feeling a heightened sense of confidence in one's naming capacities. This article is part of the theme issue 'Concepts in interaction: social engagement and inner experiences'.

Concepts, abstractness and inner speech

We explore the role of inner speech (covert self-directed talk) during the acquisition and use of concepts differing in abstractness. Following Vygotsky, inner speech results from the internalization of linguistically mediated interactions that regulate cognition and behaviour. When we acquire and process abstract concepts, uncertainties about word meaning might lead us to search actively for their meaning. Inner speech might play a role in this searching process and be differentially involved in concept learning compared with use of known concepts. Importantly, inner speech comes in different varieties-e.g. it can be expanded or condensed (with the latter involving syntactic and semantic forms of abbreviation). Do we use inner speech differently with concepts varying in abstractness? Which kinds of inner speech do we preferentially use with different kinds of abstract concepts (e.g. emotions versus numbers)? What other features of inner speech, such as dialogicality, might facilitate our use of concepts varying in abstractness (by allowing us to monitor the limits of our knowledge in simulated social exchanges, through a process we term inner social metacognition)? In tackling these questions, we address the possibility that different varieties of inner speech are flexibly used during the acquisition of concepts and their everyday use. This article is part of the theme issue 'Concepts in interaction: social engagement and inner experiences'.

Rethinking the role of language in embodied cognition

There has been a lot of recent interest in the way that language might enhance embodied cognition. This interest is driven in large part by a growing body of evidence implicating the language system in various aspects of semantic memory-including, but not limited to, its apparent contribution to abstract concepts. In this essay, I develop and defend a novel account of the cognitive role played by language in our concepts. This account relies on the embodied nature of the language system itself, diverges in significant ways from traditional accounts, and is part of a flexible, multimodal and multilevel view of our conceptual system. This article is part of the theme issue 'Concepts in interaction: social engagement and inner experiences'.

Quantifying social semantics: An inclusive definition of socialness and ratings for 8388 English words

It has been proposed that social experience plays an important role in the grounding of concepts, and socialness has been proffered as a fundamental organisational principle underpinning semantic representation in the human brain. However, the empirical support for these hypotheses is limited by inconsistencies in the way socialness has been defined and measured. To further advance theory, the field must establish a clearer working definition, and research efforts could be facilitated by the availability of an extensive set of socialness ratings for individual concepts. Therefore, in the current work, we employed a novel and inclusive definition to test the extent to which socialness is reliably perceived as a broad construct, and we report socialness norms for over 8000 English words, including nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Our inclusive socialness measure shows good reliability and validity, and our analyses suggest that the socialness ratings capture aspects of word meaning which are distinct to those measured by other pertinent semantic constructs, including concreteness and emotional valence. Finally, in a series of regression analyses, we show for the first time that the socialness of a word's meaning explains unique variance in participant performance on lexical tasks. Our dataset of socialness norms has considerable item overlap with those used in both other lexical/semantic norms and in available behavioural mega-studies. They can help target testable predictions about brain and behaviour derived from multiple representation theories and neurobiological accounts of social semantics.

Abstractness emerges progressively over the second year of life

words, terms not referring to here and now, are acquired slowly in infancy. They are difficult to acquire as they are more detached from sensory modalities than concrete words. Recent theories propose that, because of their complexity, other people are pivotal for abstract concepts' acquisition and use. Eight children (4 girls) and their mothers were observed longitudinally and extensively from 12 to 24 months of age. Video recordings of mother-infant free play with toys were done every two weeks in a laboratory setting with families in the USA. Children progressively use a range of words referring to abstract concepts, with a major shift from 12 to 15 months and again from 22 to 24 months, but the qualitative data testify an incremental growth of abstract concepts. We identified a progression in the acquisition of words denoting abstract concepts in relation to the overall productive vocabulary, suggesting that having more abstract terms in one's vocabulary promotes faster language acquisition.

Effect of a Nursing Comprehensive Skill Training Course (NCST-C) on Nursing Students' Metacognitive Awareness: A Quasi-experimental Study

PURPOSE

This study explored the effect of a nursing comprehensive skill training course (NCST-C) on the metacognitive awareness of nursing students to provide a scientific foundation for improving metacognitive awareness.

METHODS

This study used a quasi-experimental two-group matched pretest, post-test, and follow-up test. Ninety-six junior nursing students were recruited using convenience sampling and assigned to two groups by drawing lots with odd and even numbers in a nursing school at Huzhou University. The control group received a traditional skill-training course. The intervention group received NCST-C. Nursing students' metacognitive awareness inventory (MAI) was evaluated at the baseline, 16-week, and 20-week follow-up points. A repeated-measures analysis of variance and a simple effect test was used to compare each outcome measure of the two groups three times.

RESULTS

The NCST-C resulted in greater benefits for nursing students' metacognitive awareness as well as various dimensions (knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition) in the intervention group. Combined with a simple effects test, the MAI and dimension scores of those in the intervention group significantly improved at 16 weeks after the baseline (F = 9.78-44.03; all ps < .01). The sustainable effect of NCST-C lasted 1 month after the intervention (F = 14.24-62.36; ps < .01), reaching statistical significance (p < .05).

CONCLUSIONS

The NCST-C effectively developed metacognitive awareness among nursing students. Its design provides a new type of experimental course for improving metacognitive awareness.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

chictr.org.cn: ChiCTR2200057910. First registration date: 1/11/2020.

Abstract concepts: external influences, internal constraints, and methodological issues

There is a longstanding and widely held misconception about the relative remoteness of abstract concepts from concrete experiences. This review examines the current evidence for external influences and internal constraints on the processing, representation, and use of abstract concepts, like truth, friendship, and number. We highlight the theoretical benefit of distinguishing between grounded and embodied cognition and then ask which roles do perception, action, language, and social interaction play in acquiring, representing and using abstract concepts. By reviewing several studies, we show that they are, against the accepted definition, not detached from perception and action. Focussing on magnitude-related concepts, we also discuss evidence for cultural influences on abstract knowledge and explore how internal processes such as inner speech, metacognition, and inner bodily signals (interoception) influence the acquisition and retrieval of abstract knowledge. Finally, we discuss some methodological developments. Specifically, we focus on the importance of studies that investigate the time course of conceptual processing and we argue that, because of the paramount role of sociality for abstract concepts, new methods are necessary to study concepts in interactive situations. We conclude that bodily, linguistic, and social constraints provide important theoretical limitations for our theories of conceptual knowledge.

Abstract words processing induces parasympathetic activation: A thermal imaging study

Abstract words (e.g., freedom) compose a significant part of speech. Despite this, learning them is complicated. Abstract concepts collect more heterogeneous exemplars and are more detached from sensory modalities than concrete concepts. Recent views propose that, because of their complexity, other people are pivotal for abstract concepts’ acquisition and use, e.g., to explain their meaning. We tested this hypothesis using a combined behavioral and thermal imaging paradigm. Twenty-one Italian children (10\F, mean age: 6 years) determined whether acoustic stimuli (concrete and abstract words; non-words) were or not correct Italian words (lexical decision). Concrete terms yielded faster responses than abstract ones: for the first time, this effect appears with response times in very young children. More crucially, the higher increase in temperature of the nasal tip (i.e., typically associated with parasympathetic dominance of the neurovegetative response) suggests that, with abstract concepts, children might be more socially and cognitively engaged.

Concepts for Which We Need Others More: The Case of Abstract Concepts

The capability to form and use concepts is a core component of human cognition. Although all concepts are grounded in sensorimotor processes, more abstract concepts (e.g., “truth”) collect more heterogeneous and perceptually dissimilar exemplars; thus, linguistic interaction and social interaction are particularly crucial for their acquisition and use. Because of their indeterminacy, abstract concepts generate more uncertainty than more concrete concepts; hence, they induce people to monitor their inner knowledge longer and then to consult others to ask for information and negotiate the concept’s meaning. I propose that people need others more for abstract concepts than for concrete concepts: Other people are essential to acquire, process, and use abstract concepts. Conceiving abstract concepts in these terms requires the employment of novel, interactive methods to investigate how people represent them during their use.

Bodily, emotional, and public sphere at the time of COVID-19. An investigation on concrete and abstract concepts

The outbreak of Covid-19 pandemics has dramatically affected people’s lives. Among newly established practices, it has likely enriched our conceptual representations with new components. We tested this by asking Italian participants during the first lockdown to rate a set of diverse words on several crucial dimensions. We found concepts are organized along a main axis opposing internal and external grounding, with fine-grained distinctions within the two categories underlining the role of emotions. We also show through a comparison with existing data that Covid-19 impacted the organization of conceptual representations. For instance, subclasses of abstract concepts that are usually distinct converge into a unitary group, characterized by emotions and internal grounding. Additionally, we found institutional and Covid-19 related concepts, for which participants felt more the need for others to understand the meaning, clustered together. Our results show that the spread of Covid-19 has simultaneously changed our lives and shaped our conceptual representations.

From Affordances to Abstract Words: The Flexibility of Sensorimotor Grounding

The sensorimotor system plays a critical role in several cognitive processes. Here, we review recent studies documenting this interplay at different levels. First, we concentrate on studies that have shown how the sensorimotor system is flexibly involved in interactions with objects. We report evidence demonstrating how social context and situations influence affordance activation, and then focus on tactile and kinesthetic components in body-object interactions. Then, we turn to word use, and review studies that have shown that not only concrete words, but also abstract words are grounded in the sensorimotor system. We report evidence that abstract concepts activate the mouth effector more than concrete concepts, and discuss this effect in light of studies on adults, children, and infants. Finally, we pinpoint possible sensorimotor mechanisms at play in the acquisition and use of abstract concepts. Overall, we show that the involvement of the sensorimotor system is flexibly modulated by context, and that its role can be integrated and flanked by that of other systems such as the linguistic system. We suggest that to unravel the role of the sensorimotor system in cognition, future research should fully explore the complexity of this intricate, and sometimes slippery, relation.

Differences and similarities in the conceptualization of COVID-19 and other diseases in the first Italian lockdown

Several studies have highlighted the flexible character of our conceptual system. However, less is known about the construction of meaning and the impact of novel concepts on the structuring of our conceptual space. We addressed these questions by collecting free listing data from Italian participants on a newly-and yet nowadays critical-introduced concept, i.e., COVID-19, during the first Italian lockdown. We also collected data for other five illness-related concepts. Our results show that COVID-19's representation is mostly couched in the emotional sphere, predominantly evoking fear-linked to both possible health-related concerns and social-emotional ones. In contrast with initial public debates we found that participants did not assimilate COVID-19 neither completely to severe illnesses (e.g., tumor) nor completely to mild illnesses (e.g., flu). Moreover, we also found that COVID-19 has shaped conceptual relations of other concepts in the illness domain, making certain features and associations more salient (e.g., flu-fear; disease-mask). Overall, our results show for the first time how a novel, real concept molds existing conceptual relations, testifying the malleability of our conceptual system.

Abstract concepts in interaction: the need of others when guessing abstract concepts smooths dyadic motor interactions

concepts (ACs, e.g. 'justice') are more complex compared with concrete concepts (CCs) (e.g. 'table'). Indeed, they do not possess a single object as a referent, they assemble quite heterogeneous members and they are more detached from exteroceptive and more grounded in interoceptive experience. Recent views have hypothesized that interpersonal communication is particularly crucial to acquire and use ACs. The current study investigates the reliance of ACs/CCs representation on interpersonal behaviour. We asked participants to perform a motor interaction task with two avatars who embodied two real confederates. Before and after the motor interaction task, the two confederates provided participants with hints in a concept guessing task associated with visual stimuli: one helped in guessing ACs and the other, CCs. A control study we performed both with the materials employed in the main experiment and with other materials, confirmed that associating verbal concepts with visual images was more difficult with ACs than with CCs. Consistently, the results of the main experiment showed that participants asked for more hints with ACs than CCs and were more synchronous when interacting with the avatar corresponding to the AC's confederate. The results highlight an important role of sociality in grounding ACs.

Is justice grounded? How expertise shapes conceptual representation of institutional concepts

Using abstract concepts is a hallmark of human cognition. While multiple kinds of abstract concepts exist, they so far have been conceived as a unitary kind in opposition to concrete ones. Here, we focus on Institutional concepts, like justice or norm, investigating their fine-grained differences with respect to other kinds of abstract and concrete concepts, and exploring whether their representation varies according to individual proficiency. Specifically, we asked experts and non-experts in the legal field to evaluate four kinds of concepts (i.e., institutional, theoretical, food, artefact) on 16 dimensions: abstractness-concreteness; imageability; contextual availability; familiarity; age of acquisition; modality of acquisition; social valence; social metacognition; arousal; valence; interoception; metacognition; perceptual modality strength; body-object interaction; mouth and hand involvement. Results showed that Institutional concepts rely more than other categories on linguistic/social and inner experiences and are primarily characterized by positive valence. In addition, a more subtle characterization of the institutional domain emerged: Pure-institutional concepts (e.g., parliament) were perceived as more similar to technical tools, while Meta-institutional concepts (e.g., validity) were characterized mainly by abstract components. Importantly, for what concerns individual proficiency, we found that the level of expertise affects conceptual representation. Only law-experts associated Institutional concepts with exteroceptive and emotional experiences, showing also a more grounded and situated representation of the two types of institutional concepts. Overall, our finding highlights the richness and flexibility of abstract concepts and suggests that they differ in the degree of embodiment and grounding. Implications of the results for current theories of conceptual representation and social institutions are discussed.

Sensorimotor and interoceptive dimensions in concrete and abstract concepts

Recent theories propose that abstract concepts, compared to concrete ones, might activate to a larger extent interoceptive, social and linguistic experiences. At the same time, recent research has underlined the importance of investigating how different sub-kinds of abstract concepts are represented. We report a pre-registered experiment, preceded by a pilot study, in which we asked participants to evaluate the difficulty of 3 kinds of concrete concepts (natural objects, tools, and food concepts) and abstract concepts (Philosophical and Spiritual concepts, PS, Physical Space Time and Quantity concepts, PSTQ, and Emotional, Mental State and Social concepts, EMSS). While rating the words, participants were assigned to different conditions designed to interfere with conceptual processing: they were required to squeeze a ball (hand motor system activation), to chew gum (mouth motor system activation), to self-estimate their heartbeats (interoception), and to perform a motor articulatory task (inner speech involvement). In a control condition they simply rated the difficulty of words. A possible interference should result in the increase of the difficulty ratings. Bayesian analyses reveal that, compared to concrete ones, abstract concepts are more grounded in interoceptive experience and concrete concepts less in linguistic experience (mouth motor system involvement), and that the experience on which different kinds of abstract and concrete concepts differs widely. For example, within abstract concepts interoception plays a major role for EMSS and PS concepts, while the ball squeezing condition interferes more for PSTQ concepts, confirming that PSTQ are the most concrete among abstract concepts, and tap into sensorimotor manual experience. Implications of the results for current theories of conceptual representation are discussed.

A Future of Words: Language and the Challenge of Abstract Concepts

The paper outlines one of the most important challenges that embodied and grounded theories need to face, i.e., that to explain how abstract concepts (abstractness) are acquired, represented, and used. I illustrate the view according to which abstract concepts are grounded not only in sensorimotor experiences, like concrete concepts, but also and to a greater extent in linguistic, social, and inner experiences. Specifically, I discuss the role played by metacognition, inner speech, social metacognition, and interoception. I also present evidence showing that the weight of linguistic, social, and inner experiences varies depending on the considered sub-kind of abstract concepts (e.g., mental states and spiritual concepts, numbers, emotions, social concepts). I argue that the challenge to explain abstract concepts representation implies the recognition of: a. the role of language, intended as inner and social tool, in shaping our mind; b. the importance of differences across languages; c. the existence of different kinds of abstract concepts; d. the necessity to adopt new paradigms, able to capture the use of abstract concepts in context and interactive situations. This challenge should be addressed with an integrated approach that bridges developmental, anthropological, and neuroscientific studies. This approach extends embodied and grounded views incorporating insights from distributional statistics views of meaning, from pragmatics and semiotics.

Touch me if you can: The intangible but grounded nature of abstract concepts

Thinking about what the senses cannot grasp is one of the hallmarks of human cognition. We argue that "intangible abstracta" are represented differently from other products of abstraction, that goal-derived categorization supports their learning, and that they are grounded also in internalized linguistic and social interaction. We conclude by suggesting different ways in which abstractness contributes to cement group cohesion.

Somatic and visceral effects of word valence, arousal and concreteness in a continuum lexical space

Although affective and semantic word properties are known to independently influence our sensorimotor system, less is known about their interaction. We investigated this issue applying a data-driven mixed-effects regression approach, evaluating the impact of lexical-semantic properties on electrophysiological parameters, namely facial muscles activity (left corrugator supercilii, zygomaticus major, levator labii superioris) and heartbeat, during word processing. 500 Italian words were acoustically presented to 20 native-speakers, while electrophysiological signals were continuously recorded. Stimuli varied for affective properties, namely valence (the degree of word positivity), arousal (the amount of emotional activation brought by the word), and semantic ones, namely concreteness. Results showed that the three variables interacted in predicting both heartbeat and muscular activity. Specifically, valence influenced activation for lower levels of arousal. This pattern was further modulated by concreteness: the lower the word concreteness, the larger affective-variable impact. Taken together, our results provide evidence for bodily responses during word comprehension. Crucially, such responses were found not only for voluntary muscles, but also for the heartbeat, providing evidence to the idea of a common emotional motor system. The higher impact of affective properties for abstract words supports proposals suggesting that emotions play a central role in the grounding of abstract concepts.

More than a scaffold: Language is a neuroenhancement

What role does language play in our thoughts? A longstanding proposal that has gained traction among supporters of embodied or grounded cognition suggests that it serves as a cognitive scaffold. This idea turns on the fact that language-with its ability to capture statistical regularities, leverage culturally acquired information, and engage grounded metaphors-is an effective and readily available support for our thinking. In this essay, I argue that language should be viewed as more than this; it should be viewed as a neuroenhancement. The neurologically realized language system is an important subcomponent of a flexible, multimodal, and multilevel conceptual system. It is not merely a source for information about the world but also a computational add-on that extends our conceptual reach. This approach provides a compelling explanation of the course of development, our facility with abstract concepts, and even the scope of language-specific influences on cognition.

Varieties of abstract concepts: development, use and representation in the brain

The capacity for abstract thought is one of the hallmarks of human cognition. However, the mechanisms underlying the ability to form and use abstract concepts like 'fantasy' and 'grace' have not been elucidated yet. This theme issue brings together developmental, social and cognitive psychologists, linguists, anthropologists, cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, philosophers and computer scientists to present theoretical insights and novel evidence on how abstract concepts are acquired, used and represented in the brain. Many of the contributions conceive concepts as grounded in sensorimotor systems and constrained by bodily mechanisms and structures. The theme issue develops along two main axes, related to the most promising research directions on abstract concepts. The axes focus on (i) the different kinds of abstract concepts (numbers, emotions, evaluative concepts like moral and aesthetic ones, social concepts); (ii) the role played by perception and action, language and sociality, and inner processes (emotions, interoception, metacognition) in grounding abstract concepts. Most papers adopt a cognitive science/neuroscience approach, but the theme issue also includes studies on development, on social cognition, and on how linguistic diversity shapes abstract concepts. Overall, the theme issue provides an integrated theoretical account that highlights the importance of language, sociality and inner processes for abstract concepts, and that offers new methodological tools to investigate them.This article is part of the theme issue 'Varieties of abstract concepts: development, use and representation in the brain'.

Sociality to Reach Objects and to Catch Meaning

Sociality influences both concrete and abstract concepts acquisition and representation, but in different ways. Here we propose that sociality is crucial during the acquisition of abstract concepts but less for concrete concepts, that have a bounded perceptual referent and can be learned more autonomously. For the acquisition of abstract concepts, instead, the human relation would be pivotal in order to master complex meanings. Once acquired, concrete words can act as tools, able to modify our sensorimotor representation of the surrounding environment. Indeed, pronouncing a word the referent of which is distant from us we implicitly assume that, thanks to the contribution of others, the object becomes reachable; this would expand our perception of the near bodily space. Abstract concepts would modify our sensorimotor representation of the space only in the earlier phases of their acquisition, specifically when the child represents an interlocutor as a real, physical "ready to help actor" who can help her in forming categories and in explaining the meaning of words that do not possess a concrete referent. Once abstract concepts are acquired, they can work as social tools: the social metacognition mechanism (awareness of our concepts and of our need of the help of others) can evoke the presence of a "ready to help actor" in an implicit way, as a predisposition to ask information to fill the knowledge gaps.

Abstract concepts, language and sociality: from acquisition to inner speech

The problem of representation of abstract concepts, such as 'freedom' and 'justice', has become particularly crucial in recent years, owing to the increased success of embodied and grounded views of cognition. We will present a novel view on abstract concepts and abstract words. Since abstract concepts do not have single objects as referents, children and adults might rely more on input from others to learn them; we, therefore, suggest that linguistic and social experience play an important role for abstract concepts. We will discuss evidence obtained in our and other laboratories showing that processing of abstract concepts evokes linguistic interaction and social experiences, leading to the activation of the mouth motor system. We will discuss the possible mechanisms that underlie this activation. Mouth motor system activation can be due to re-enactment of the experience of conceptual acquisition, which occurred through the mediation of language. Alternatively, it could be due to the re-explanation of the word meaning, possibly through inner speech. Finally, it can be due to a metacognitive process revealing low confidence in the meaning of our concepts. This process induces in us the need to rely on others to ask/negotiate conceptual meaning. We conclude that with abstract concepts language works as a social tool: it extends our thinking abilities and pushes us to rely on others to integrate our knowledge.This article is part of the theme issue 'Varieties of abstract concepts: development, use, and representation in the brain'.