What do wheels, pizzas, and clocks have in common?

 
 

If your answer is “they’re round objects”, you got to this answer through an abstraction process. You took one step up onto the ladder of abstraction and formed a category that includes wheels, pizzas and clocks, based on their shared feature: roundness. The category of round objects is more generic than each of its composing categories: pizzas, wheels and clocks.  You could construct an even more generic category above round objects, like “shapes”. And you could construct more specific categories below pizzas (Margherita, for instance) or below wheels (steel wheels, or bike wheels) and so forth.

 
 

Our ability to abstract is fundamental to learn new information, communicate ideas AND appreciate art. Such ability relies on a very powerful tool: human language.

 
 
 

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).  


These different types of words are processed in different ways in our minds, and they have different effects on us, when we read them. We use more concrete words when we want to be clear and we try to exemplify difficult concepts that are usually quite abstract. We use highly specific terminology when we talk with experts, and more generic words when we talk with non-experts.

 
 

The ABSTRACTION project will investigate how word concreteness and word specificity, the two variables involved in abstractions, function and interact in human thought, language and creativity.

 

IS THIS NEW?

 
 
 

Yes. 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. 

 
 

The ABSTRACTION team will collect specificity data for thousands of words in 2 languages (English and Italian) through an innovative gamification technique. The data will be then used to understand 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 

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT

 
 

Words have an immense power and much of this power lies under the radar of our conscious detection. A single word can deeply influence our behavior.

 
 

choosing the right word in the right context is crucial.

 
 
 

When people (including doctors) are told that a medical treatment has 95% survival rate, they are more likely to use it and prescribe it to patients, than when they are told that it has a 5% death rate.

Word concreteness and word specificity are likely to play an important role in determining the clarity, persuasiveness, informativeness and efficacy of different types of text, for different types of readers. The exact role of concreteness and specificity in constructing good vs bad texts is still unknown. The ABSTRACTION team will address this gap.