In Experiment 1, the symbol interdependency hypothesis was tested with both concrete and abstract stimuli. Symbolic (i.e., semantic neighbourhood distance) and embodied (i.e., iconicity) factors were manipulated in two tasks—one that tapped symbolic relations (i.e., semantic relatedness judgment) and another that tapped embodied relations (i.e., iconicity judgment). Results supported the symbol interdependency hypothesis in that the symbolic factor was recruited for the semantic relatedness task and the embodied factor was recruited for the iconicity task. Across tasks, and especially in the iconicity task, abstract stimuli resulted in shorter RTs. This finding was in contrast to the concreteness effect where concrete words result in shorter RTs. Experiment 2 followed up on this finding by replicating the iconicity task from Experiment 1 in an ERP paradigm. Behavioural results continued to show a reverse concreteness effect with shorter RTs for abstract stimuli. However, ERP results paralleled the N400 and anterior N700 concreteness effects found in the literature, with more negative amplitudes for concrete stimuli.

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In an iconicity judgement task, participants were asked whether word pairs were iconic (e.g., nose–tongue; joy–sorrow) or reverse-iconic (e.g., tongue–nose; sorrow–joy), and an advantage for abstract word pairs (i.e., joy–sorrow) was found. Malhi and Buchanan proposed that this reverse concreteness, or abstractness, effect was the result of participants taking a visualisation/imagining (time-costly) approach towards the concrete word pairs and an emotional/intuitive (time-efficient) approach towards the abstract word pairs. This study tested this proposal by asking participants questions about strategy use (Experiment 1). In the forced-choice questions, all participants reported using a visualisation/imagining approach towards the concrete word pairs and most participants reported using an emotional/intuitive approach towards the abstract word pairs. In the open-ended responses, visual-spatial reasoning and real-life experience emerged as themes for the concrete word pairs and social norms and values emerged as themes for the abstract word pairs, adding to our understanding of the grounding of abstract words. In Experiment 2, participants were supplied with pictures as an aid to visualisation with the expectation that this would reduce the time required for concrete word processing. Supplying pictures made participants faster and more accurate at completing the task. Experiment 3 manipulated the type of visual aid by also supplying pictures that did not match the orientation of the word pairs. Participants were only more accurate when the pictures were in the correct and iconic spatial arrangement. A flexible abstractness and concreteness effects (FACE) theory is proposed which integrates symbolic and embodied accounts and introduces constructs such as direct and constrained imageability for concrete words and indirect and free imageability for abstract words.