Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The prepositions "in" and "on" are used in a wide variety of concrete, spatial contexts as well as abstract, non-spatial contexts. Previous research suggests that the meanings of these prepositions when used in abstract, non-spatial contexts might be grounded in the meanings these same prepositions have when they are used in concrete, spatial contexts; however, few studies have attempted to empirically test for evidence of these connections directly. The current study attempted to conceptually replicate Feist and Breaux (2013): No evidence of priming was observed. It could be that our prime stimuli did not adequately activate the meanings of "in" and "on" or that our participants' linguistic habits obscured any impact of the prime stimuli. Further research is needed to truly understand the role that grounded connections might play in the lexical semantics of words that are used in both abstract and spatial contexts.