Drawing inferences from concrete and abstract sentences

Message Intensity and Cognitive Representations of Discourse Effects on Inferential Processing

“…However, there was no evidence demonstrating that responses to the key inferential items were faster for high-intensity texts than for the texts low in intensity. Consistent with the research of others (e.g./ Belmore et al, 1982), responses to questions probing for premise material were faster than responses to questions probing for inferential information. Finally, since respondents obtained high accuracy scores on the premise items of the semantic integration and recognition task for questions of both true and false truth value, the evidence suggests that inferential performance was not affected by response bias or a failure to remember text information.…”

“…Consistent with earlier research, it was hypothesized that persons would exhibit longer response latencies to the semantic integration questions probing for inferential rather than premise information (e.g., Belmore et al, 1982). If intensity affected the strength of the association between the explicit and implicit material, then it followed that decisions on the true inferential items for high-intensity texts should be faster than for texts low in intensity.…”

Activating meaning in time: The role of imageability and form-class

“…whereas hope is low in imageability (Paivio, 1986). Many studies have shown an advantage for concrete over abstract words, in tasks ranging from lexical decision (Bleasdale, 1987;de Groot, 1989;Rubenstein, Gar eld, & Millikan, 1970;Schwanen ugel, Harnishfeger, & Stowe, 1988) to sentence veri cation (Belmore, Yates, Bellack, Jones, & Rosenquist, 1982;Holmes & Langford, 1976;Jorgensen & Kintsch, 1973) and sentence comprehension (Haberlandt & Graesser, 1985). A less consistent pattern has been obtained with word naming, with some studies showing a clear advantage for concrete words (Schwanen ugel & Stowe, 1989;Strain, Patterson, & Seidenberg, 1995;Tyler, Voice, & Moss, 1996, 2000, others showing only a small advantage (Bleasdale, 1987;Rubin 1980)) and still other studies nding no difference (Brown & Watson, 1987;Coltheart, Laxton, & Keating, 1988;McFalls, Schwanen ugel, & Stahl, 1996;Richardson, 1976).…”

To watch, to see, and to differ: An event-related potential study of concreteness effects as a function of word class and lexical ambiguity

“…In the domain of language processing, for example, it has been found that concrete words are responded to more quickly in lexical decision tasks (Schwanenflugel, Harnishfeger, & Stowe, 1988) and are read aloud more accurately and with less semantic errors by deep dyslexic patients (Gerhand & Barry, 2000). Such effects also hold at the sentence level: concrete sentences are comprehended more quickly and accurately than abstract sentences (Haberlandt & Graesser, 1985;Schwanenflugel & Shoben, 1983) and are responded to faster in meaningfulness judgment (Holmes & Langford, 1976) and truthfulness judgment tasks (Belmore, Yates, Bellack, Jones, & Rosenquist, 1982). the critical factor, with concrete words accruing a processing advantage by virtue of the fact that they can be accessed via both the verbal system (also used to store and process abstract words) and the imagery system.…”