There are a number of long‐standing theories on how the cognitive processing of abstract words, like ‘life’, differs from that of concrete words, like ‘knife’. This review considers current perspectives on this debate, focusing particularly on insights obtained from patients with language disorders and integrating these with evidence from functional neuroimaging studies. The evidence supports three distinct and mutually compatible hypotheses. (1) Concrete and abstract words differ in their representational substrates, with concrete words depending particularly on sensory experiences and abstract words on linguistic, emotional, and magnitude‐based information. Differential dependence on visual versus verbal experience is supported by the evidence for graded specialization in the anterior temporal lobes for concrete versus abstract words. In addition, concrete words have richer representations, in line with better processing of these words in most aphasic patients and, in particular, patients with semantic dementia. (2) Abstract words place greater demands on executive regulation processes because they have variable meanings that change with context. This theory explains abstract word impairments in patients with semantic‐executive deficits and is supported by neuroimaging studies showing greater response to abstract words in inferior prefrontal cortex. (3) The relationships between concrete words are governed primarily by conceptual similarity, while those of abstract words depend on association to a greater degree. This theory, based primarily on interference and priming effects in aphasic patients, is the most recent to emerge and the least well understood. I present analyses indicating that patterns of lexical co‐occurrence may be important in understanding these effects.

中文翻译：

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“生命”和其他抽象词语的含义：来自神经心理学的见解。

关于抽象单词（例如“生命”）的认知处理与具体单词（例如“刀”）的认知处理之间的区别，有许多长期存在的理论。这篇综述考虑了这场辩论的当前观点，尤其着重于从语言障碍患者那里获得的见解，并将这些观点与功能性神经影像学研究的证据相结合。证据支持三个截然不同且相互兼容的假设。（1）具体词和抽象词在表示形式上有所不同，具体词主要取决于感官体验，而具体词取决于语言，情感和基于幅度的信息。具体单词与抽象单词在前颞叶的分级专业化的证据支持了对视觉体验与口头体验的差异依赖性。另外，在大多数失语症患者，尤其是语义痴呆患者中，具体单词具有更丰富的表示，与对这些单词的更好处理相一致。（2）抽象词对行政规章程序提出了更高的要求，因为它们具有随上下文而变化的可变含义。该理论解释了语义执行缺陷患者的抽象词损伤，并得到了神经影像学研究的支持，该研究显示，对前额叶皮层下层抽象词的反应更大。（3）具体词之间的关系主要由概念上的相似性决定，而抽象词之间的关系在很大程度上取决于联想。该理论主要基于失语症患者的干扰和启动效应，是最近出现的，了解最少的理论。