Does the Perception of Spatial Relations Affect the Response Time for Abstract Concepts?

Introduction Many studies have demonstrated that a perception-based knowledge representation approach can account for the representation of concrete concepts (e.g., table). However, only a few studies have been carried out to test whether this approach can explain the representation of abstract concepts (e.g., prejudice) as well. Barsalou (1999) assumed three aspects that make the representation of abstract concepts within a perception-based knowledge representation framework possible: a) the situation as the background for understanding, b) selective attention, and c) introspective states and processes. Richardson, Spivey, Barsalou, and McRae (2003) showed that the representation of abstract concepts can be ascribed to spatial relations that were derived from perceptual experiences. In the present study it was hypothesized that a spatial relation (difference vs. sameness) is extracted during perception of abstract concepts and stored in long-term memory. A priming method was applied to test whether the perception of simple image schemas characterized by certain spatial relations facilitate the response to the corresponding abstract nouns.