SubsidieMeestersAbstraction. Unlocking meaning from experience, through language.
The ABSTRACTION project aims to collect and analyze specificity data for thousands of words in English and Italian to explore how specificity and concreteness shape thought, language, and creativity.
Projectdetails
Introduction
Words, language's building blocks, are labels that define different types of categories. Some words define categories of concrete entities (cats, tables) while others define abstract entities (legacy, empathy). Some words define generic categories that encompass many different entities (vehicles, art) while others define more specific ones (sport cars, Impressionism).
Mechanisms of Abstraction
To unlock meaning from experience, we construct different types of categories through mechanisms of abstraction. Concreteness and specificity are the two variables that support abstractions.
Challenges in Research
However, when investigating the mechanisms and effects of abstraction, scholars from different fields typically focus only on specificity or only on concreteness. Relying on different and partial definitions of abstraction, the debate across scientific communities is impaired and the theoretical development is jeopardized. This is also due to the fact that human-generated resources to measure specificity do not exist.
Project Overview
The ABSTRACTION team will collect specificity data for thousands of words in 2 languages (English and Italian) through an innovative gamification technique. Using this data and other lexical resources, we will run extensive statistical analyses aimed at explaining how specificity interacts with concreteness in:
- Thought, to explain contrasting findings that have been previously attributed to concreteness alone
- Language, to construct texts that are optimally clear and informative for the target readerships
- Creativity, to construct effective metaphors in different contexts
Conclusion
ABSTRACTION will explain how word specificity and concreteness enable us to unlock meaning from experience and achieve the higher-order generalizations on which much of our thinking and talking relies. This is a hot topic in cognitive science, where the grounding of abstract concepts is an open question, and in AI research, where it is still unknown how machines may construct and use concepts in the way humans do.
Financiële details & Tijdlijn
Financiële details
| Subsidiebedrag | € 1.392.265 |
| Totale projectbegroting | € 1.392.265 |
Tijdlijn
| Startdatum | 1-6-2022 |
| Einddatum | 31-5-2027 |
| Subsidiejaar | 2022 |
Partners & Locaties
Projectpartners
- ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - UNIVERSITA DI BOLOGNApenvoerder
Land(en)
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This project aims to develop a comprehensive theory of reification, exploring its causes and effects to inform interventions that challenge harmful social constructs and improve societal outcomes.
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REPRESENT aims to uncover the cognitive and neural foundations of abstract reasoning in early childhood by studying brain network maturation and its impact on representing beliefs and possibilities.
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The project aims to explore the evolution, universal processes, and cognitive influences on word family formation by integrating historical, typological, and cognitive linguistic data through new computational models.
Cognitive and Neural Computations of Semantics
CONNECTS aims to resolve the paradox of semantic congruity's effects on cognition by developing a unified framework that integrates behavioral, neural, and computational methods.
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