The effect of word concreteness and imagery on the production of written definitions was investigated using procedures designed to produce more generalizable results than previous investigations. A random sample of words was drawn from the Paivio, Yuille, and Madigan (1968) norms, and college undergraduates were presented with a randomly selected, randomly ordered set of 12 words drawn from the original random sample. Regression analyses revealed that after controlling for other factors, concrete, highly imageable words promoted the use of imagery in writing, which in turn led to the production of better definitions.
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