Idiosyncratic Tower of Babel: Individual Differences in Word-Meaning Representation Increase as Word Abstractness Increases
通过行为和脑成像实验，发现人们对词汇意义的理解存在个体差异，且这种差异随词汇抽象度增加而增大，差异程度可由词汇与语言或感官经验的关联程度预测。
Humans primarily rely on language to communicate, on the basis of a shared understanding of the basic building blocks of communication: words. Do we mean the same things when we use the same words? Although cognitive neural research on semantics has revealed the common principles of word-meaning representation, the factors underlying the potential individual variations in word meanings are unknown. Here, we empirically characterized the intersubject consistency of 90 words across 20 adult subjects (10 female) using both behavioral measures (rating-based semantic-relationship patterns) and neuroimaging measures (word-evoked brain activity patterns). Across both the behavioral and neuroimaging experiments, we showed that the magnitude of individual disagreements on word meanings could be modeled on the basis of how much language or sensory experience is associated with a word and that this variation increases with word abstractness. Uncovering the cognitive and neural origins of word-meaning disagreements across individuals has implications for potential mechanisms to modulate such disagreements.