2020
Overview
Conceptual processes refer to the mental operations by which individuals form, organize, manipulate, and retrieve concepts—the mental representations that allow people to categorize experiences, objects, and ideas. Research published in Memory on this topic examines how abstract concepts, which lack direct sensory referents, are mentally represented and understood. One line of investigation explores conceptual metaphor theory as a framework for understanding abstract thought, proposing that people comprehend intangible ideas by mapping them onto more concrete, embodied experiences. This work addresses fundamental questions about the cognitive mechanisms underlying abstract reasoning and whether metaphorical thinking serves as a bridge between physical experience and higher-order thought. Understanding conceptual processes matters because concepts form the foundation of human cognition, enabling communication, problem-solving, and knowledge organization across domains. How the mind represents ideas that cannot be directly perceived—such as time, justice, or emotion—remains a central challenge in cognitive science. Research in this area contributes to broader understanding of semantic memory, language comprehension, and the relationship between bodily experience and thought, with implications for education, artificial intelligence, and theories of meaning.
Research published in this journal
1 peer-reviewed article, ranked by relevance. Each links to its DOI.
How this research is being cited
The 1 article above has been cited 3 times in the scholarly literature. Citation data via OpenAlex and Crossref, updated Jun 2026.
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2026 · Journal of Language, Literature, and Educational Research
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Tao Feng et al. · 2025 · International Conference on Learning Representations
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2025 · IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
A sample of recent works citing this journal's research on Conceptual Processes, linking to each citing work.