What Are Abstract Concepts? On Lexical Ambiguity and Concreteness Ratings

Abstract In psycholinguistics, concepts are considered abstract if they do not apply to physical objects that we can touch, see, feel, hear, smell or taste. Psychologists usually distinguish concrete from by means of so-called concreteness ratings . rating studies, laypeople asked rate the words based on above criterion. The wide use motivates an assessment them. I point out two problems: First, most current test intuited word forms as opposed concepts. This ignores ubiquitous phenomenon lexical ambiguity. Second, criterion instruction texts studies rely does capture notion psychologists working normally interested in, i.e., could reasonably be sensorimotor representations. For many pick objects, this is reasonable. paper, propose a characterization and avoids these problems may useful for future in psychology.