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Semantic links among abstract and concrete words between younger and older adults
Poster Session A, Wednesday, September 30, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm, Wangari Maathai
This poster is part of the Sandbox Series.
Abigail Cosgrove1, Jie Yan1, Dakota Bierbaum1, Chaleece Sandberg1, Anna Serrichio2, Michele Diaz1; 1The Pennsylvania State University, 2Boston University
Older adults have richer semantic knowledge and broader contextual experience with concepts (Burke and Peters, 1986; Park et al., 2002; Salthouse, 2019; Hoffman, 2018). However, with this greater semantic richness comes a larger set of words to choose from which can influence age-related processing deficits (Hoffman, 2019; Hills et al., 2013). Semantic memory network analyses have the capability to measure the interaction between the information stored in semantic memory and the ability to navigate and retrieve relevant information (Kenett et al., 2025). While several studies have consistently found age-related differences in semantic memory networks, such that older adults networks are less efficient, less interconnected and more segregated, this work has largely focused on semantic memory networks derived from highly salient, physically concrete concepts. However, abstract concepts may comprise nearly 60% of our vocabulary (Lupyan & Winter, 2018), suggesting that abstract concepts are an important component of semantic memory. Consistent with this, some theoretical accounts have suggested that a word’s concreteness may influence the patterns of spreading activation with concrete words having a more focal and stronger pattern and abstract words having a broader, more distributed pattern (Crutch et al., 2009; Mirman et al., 2017; Newton & Barry, 1997; Schwanenflugel & Shoben, 1983). However, this idea has not been empirically tested, especially the potential representational differences between concrete and abstract words may also interact with age. This is a particularly relevant issue as older adults may rely more on thematic associations (Mirman et al., 2017) and may be more sensitive to context and semantic diversity (Hoffman, 2018; Johns et al., 2016). Older adults also experience age-related declines in executive functions such as working memory and inhibition (Salthouse, 2019). Inhibition may also influence semantic activation and word selection. Thus, the current study analyzes the spread of activation of concepts related to abstract and concrete words, and whether this is influenced by executive function and age. Specifically, we investigated whether abstract words rely more heavily on thematic relationships and concrete words rely more heavily on taxonomic relationships, and whether these patterns are moderated by age. 60 younger and 60 older adults completed a series of online tasks assessing semantic memory including free associations (production, individualized semantic relations among concepts), odd-one-out (semantic selection/processing), and Stroop (executive function, task switching and planning ability). The findings suggest that core semantic representations remain largely stable across aging, as both younger and older adults demonstrated preserved concreteness effects and similar reliance on thematic versus taxonomic relationships. Although older adults responded more slowly, their higher accuracy suggests maintained semantic knowledge despite age-related slowing in response speed. These results also support the representational framework proposed by Crutch and colleagues (2009): abstract words relied more on thematic relationships, whereas concrete words relied more on taxonomic relationships. Across age groups, taxonomic trials for concrete words were responded to faster and more accurately than thematic trials, while the reverse pattern emerged for abstract words. Critically, there was no evidence of an age-related shift in reliance on different semantic relationships.
Topic Areas: Meaning: Lexical Semantics, Language Production