Event related potential exploration of the organizational structure of abstract versus concrete words in neurologically intact younger adults

•The DRF hypothesis predicts a concreteness by relationship interaction.•We used ERP to examine this interaction in a semantic relatedness judgment task.•We found a concreteness by relationship interaction partially aligning with this hypothesis. The purpose of this study was to test the effects of concreteness and relationship type (similarity vs. association) on semantic processing using event-related potentials (ERP). Neurophysiological evidence has been found for the concreteness effect and for an effect of relationship type. This study replicated and extended these findings by investigating the interaction of concreteness and relationship type. Twenty-four neurologically healthy young adults performed lexical decision and semantic relatedness tasks while continuous scalp EEG was recorded. Larger N400 effects were found for concrete words in associative relationships than for concrete words in similarity relationships and abstract words in either type of relationship. The results are discussed in relation to the different representational frameworks account for abstract and concrete word processing.