Table 1 Descriptive information of the 32 experiments included in the meta-analysis.
From: An ALE meta-analytical review of the neural correlates of abstract and concrete words
Paper | Technique | Sample size | Age of subjects (years) | Stimuli | Stimuli presentation modality | Experimental task | Design | Random or fixed effect | Contrasts p value* | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | D'Esposito et al., 1997 | MRI, 1.5 Tesla | 7 | Range 18–37 | English nouns (concrete vs abstract) | Auditory | Mental image generation (concrete) and passive listening (abstract) | blocks | Fixed | p < .001 corrected voxel-wise |
2 | Mellet et al., 1998 | PET | 8 | Range 20–25 | French nouns (concrete vs abstract) | Auditory | Mental image generation (concrete) and passive listening (abstract) | blocks | Fixed | p = 0.001 uncorrected |
3 | Perani et al., 1999 | PET | 14 | Range 22–26 | Italian words: (1) Concrete verbs, (2) Abstract verbs, (3) Concrete nouns, (4) Abstract nouns | Visual | Lexical decision (classify stimuli as words or nonwords) | Blocks | Fixed | p < 0.001 uncorrected |
4 | Kiehl et al., 1999 | MRI, 1.5 Tesla | 6 | Range 22–26 | English words: concrete or abstract | Visual | Lexical decision (classify stimuli as words or nonwords) | Blocks | Fixed | p < 0.05 corrected voxel-wise |
5 | Jessen et al., 2000 | MRI, 1.5 Tesla | 14 | Range 20–44 (31.5 ± 6.3) | German nouns: concrete or abstract | Visual | Memory encoding task | Blocks | Fixed | p < 0.001 uncorrected |
6 | Tyler et al., 2001 | PET | 9 | Range 21–34 26 ± 5 | English words: concrete or abstract | Visual | Lexical decision (classify stimuli as words or nonwords) | Block | Fixed-effect | p < 0.05 corrected voxel-wise |
7 | Grossman et al., 2002 | MRI, 1.5 Tesla | 16 | Mean age 23.4 | English nouns: animals, implement, abstract | Visual | Semantic judgment (pleasant or not) | Blocks | Fixed | p < 0.05 corrected voxel-wise |
8 | Kounios et al., 2003 | MRI, 1.5 Tesla | 16 | Mean age 73.9 | English nouns: animal, implement, and abstract | Visual | Semantic judgement (pleasant or not) | Block | Fixed-effect | p < 0.05 corrected |
9 | Whatmough et al., 2004 | PET | 15 | Range 69–90 74.3 ± 5.6 | English nouns: two pairs (concrete or abstract) | Visual | Semantic similarity decision (read aloud if the pairs are similar in meanings) | ns | Ns | p < 0.05 corrected voxel-wise |
10 | Noppeney and Price, 2004 | MRI, 2 Tesla | 15 | Range 21–46 mean age 30 | English (1) Abstract concepts, (2) Hand movements, (3) visual attributes (4) Sounds | Visual | Semantic similarity decision | Blocks | Random | p < 0.001 uncorrected |
11 | Fiebach and Friederici, 2004 | MRI, 3 Tesla | 12 | Mean age 25 | German nouns: abstract and concrete | Visual | Lexical decision (classify stimuli as words or nonwords) | Event-related | Ns | p < 0.05 corrected cluster-wise |
12 | Giesbrecht et al., 2004 | MRI, 1.5 Tesla | 10 | ns | English words: high imageable and low imageable | Visual | Semantic judgement (words pairs related or unrelated) | Event-related | Random | p < 0.005 uncorrected |
13 | Sabsevitz et al., 2005 | MRI, 1.5 Tesla | 28 | Range 18–33 22.8 ± 3.6 | English nouns: concrete and abstract triads | Visual | Semantic similarity decision | Event-related | Random | p < .001, uncorrected |
14 | Binder et al., 2005 | MRI, 1.5 Tesla | 24 | Range 20–50 | English nouns: abstract and concrete | Visual | Lexical decision (classify stimuli as words or nonwords) | Event-related | Random | p < .005 uncorrected |
15 | Harris et al., 2006 | MRI, 1.5 Tesla | 20 | Range 19–50 31 ± 9 | English nouns: abstract and concrete | Visual | Semantic judgment (positive or negative) | Block | Random | p < 0.05 corrected cluster-wise |
16 | Fliessbach et al., 2006 | MRI, 1.5 Tesla | 21 | Range 19–43 27.4 ± 6.2 | German nouns: abstract and concrete | Visual | Recognition task (old/new-decision) | Event-related | Random | p < 0.05 corrected cluster-wise |
17 | Rüschemeyer et al., 2007 | MRI, 3 Tesla | 20 | Range 22–33 27 ± 3 | German verbs: simple, complex, motor, abstract | Visual | Lexical decision (classify stimuli as words or nonwords) | Block | Random | p < .001, uncorrected |
18 | Pexman et al., 2007 | MRI, 3 Tesla | 20 | 26.5 ± 4.5 | English nouns: abstract and concrete | Visual | Semantic categorization (consumable or not) | Event-related | Random | p < 0.05 ns |
19 | Van Dam et al., 2010 | MRI, 3 Tesla | 16 | range 18–38 24 ± 4.63 | Dutch verbs denoting (1) Actions that you perform mostly with your arms/hands/ mouth or (2) Abstract events | Visual | Semantic categorization task (go–no go) | Event-related | Random | p < 0.05 corrected |
20 | Zhuang et al., 2011 | MRI, 3 Tesla | 14 | Range 19–33 | British English nouns manipulating (cohort competition and imageability) | Auditory | Lexical decision (classify stimuli as words or nonwords) | Event-related | Random | p < 0.05 corrected cluster-wise |
21 | Rodríguez-Ferreiro et al., 2011 | MRI, 3 Tesla | 14 | Range 23–35 mean 29 | Spanish verbs: concrete and abstract | Visual | Passive reading | Block | Mixed effects | p < .001, uncorrected |
22 | van Dam et al., 2012 | MRI, 3 Tesla | 20 | Range 18–24 20.5 ± 2.2 | Dutch (1) Action color (2) Action nouns (3) Color (4) Abstract nouns | Auditory | Semantic categorization (action or color characteristics) | Block | Random | p < 0.005 ns |
23 | Wilson-Mendenhall et al., 2013 | MRI, 3 Tesla | 13 | Range 18–24 | English words: two abstract (convince, arithmetic) two concrete (rolling, red) | Visual | Semantic task (concept–scene match) | Block | Random | p < 0.05 corrected voxel-wise |
24 | Vigliocco et al., 2013 | MRI, 3 Tesla | 20 | Range 18–33 21.9 ± 4.4 | English nouns: abstract and concrete | Visual | Lexical decision (classify stimuli as words or nonwords) | Block | Random | p < 0.05 FWE-cluster-wise |
25 | Hayashi et al., 2014 | MRI, 1.5 Tesla | 16 | Range 20–36 26.1 ± 5.9 | Japanese kanji nouns: concrete and abstract | Visual | Generate visual imagery | Block | Random | p < .001, uncorrected |
26 | Roxbury et al., 2014 | MRI, 3 Tesla | 17 | 27 ± 5.1 | English nouns: concrete, abstract and pseudowords | Auditory | Lexical decision (classify stimuli as words or nonwords) | Event-related | Random | p < .001, uncorrected |
27 | Skipper and Olson, 2014 | MRI, 3 Tesla | 19 | Mean age 23 | English nouns: concrete and abstract | Visual | Semantic task (answer to question in reference to the 3 words in the block) | Block | Ns | p < 0.001 FDR corrected cluster-wise |
28 | Hoffman et al., 2015 | MRI, 3 Tesla | 20 | Range 20–39 mean: 25 | English words: concrete and abstract | Visual | Semantic task (synonym judgement) | Block | Random | p < 0.05 corrected cluster-wise |
29 | Kumar, 2016 | MRI, 3 Tesla | 20 | 28.3 ± 3 | Hindi nouns: abstract, concrete and non-words | Visual | Perceptual task (orthography judgment) | Block | Fixed | p < 0.05 corrected |
30 | Wang et al., 2019 | MRI, 3 Tesla | 23 | Range 19–29 mean 22.17 | Chinese nouns: abstract, concrete | Visual | Semantic task (which of the choices was more semantically related to the probe) | Block | Ns | p < 0.05 FWE corrected cluster-level |
31 | Pauligk et al., 2019 | MRI, 3 Tesla | 21 | 23.3 ± 1.9 | German nouns: abstract and concrete | Visual | Delayed lexical decision task (classify stimuli as words or nonwords) | Block | Ns | p = 0.001 corrected voxel-wise |
32 | Meersmans et al., 2020 | MRI, 3 Tesla | 26 | Range 18–34 22.9 ± 3.7 | Dutch nouns: abstract and concrete | Visual and auditory | Overt repetition task | Event-related | Random | p < 0.001 uncorrected p < 0.05 FWE-corrected |
