Retrieval contexts and the concreteness effect: Dissociations in memory for concrete and abstract words

Abstract

Decades of research on the concreteness effect, namely better memory for concrete as compared with abstract words, suggest it is a fairly robust phenomenon. Nevertheless, little attention has been given to limiting retrieval contexts. Two experiments evaluated intentional memory for concrete and abstract word lists in three retrieval contexts: free recall, explicit word-stem completion, and implicit word-stem completion. Concreteness effects were observed in free recall and in explicit word-stem completion, but not in implicit word-stem completion. These findings are consistent with both a bidirectional version of the relational-distinctiveness processing framework (Ruiz-Vargas, Cuevas, & Marschark, 1996) and a second framework combining insights from dual coding theory (Paivio, 1971(Paivio, , 1986) and the transfer appropriate processing framework (Roediger, Weldon, & Challis, 1989). Also, consistent with the relational-distinctiveness framework, the second experiment suggested that concreteness effects might depend on relational processing at encoding: Concreteness effects were observed in explicit memory for related word lists but not for unrelated word lists.Concrete words like bicycle, tiger, or kick are better remembered than abstract words like justice, humour, or obey. Four decades of research on this concreteness effect in verbal memory have shown it to be a robust phenomenon generalising over different orienting tasks (e.g

Concreteness norms for 1,659 French words: Relationships with other psycholinguistic variables and word recognition times

“…Likewise it has been found that concrete words are processed more quickly than abstract words in lexical decision (e.g., Binder, Westbury, McKiernan, Possing, & Medler, 2005;de Groot, 1989;Kroll & Merves, 1986;Roxbury, McMahon, & Copland, 2014;Schwanenflugel et al, 1988;Schwanenflugel & Stowe, 1989) and in word naming (e.g., de Groot, 1989;Schwanenflugel & Stowe, 1989). Concrete words are also remembered better than abstract words (Paivio, 1971;Paivio et al, 1966;ter Doest & Semin, 2005). This processing advantage is considered to be a classical effect in the psycholinguistic literature and it is indeed covered in every textbook on cognitive psychology.…”

“…Of course, to provide convincing evidence for this effect and support an evolutionary account of it, researchers have to test for other (and somewhat more trivial) explanations, such as the possibility that animates are easier to imagine or are more concrete than inanimates. In effect, given that concrete words are remembered better than abstract words (Paivio, 1971;Paivio, Yuille, & Smythe, 1966;ter Doest & Semin, 2005), and because concreteness is one of the most important variables accounting for the recall rates of words presented in unrelated lists (Nairne et al, 2013), this variable must be controlled for when investigating animacy effects. As a result, the availability of concreteness norms for words is essential for researchers who seek to investigate memory.…”

Richer concepts are better remembered: number of features effects in free recall

“…On each trial in the study phase, a word was presented in the center of a 17″ monitor controlled by a Macintosh G3 computer using PsyScope (Cohen et al, 1993 ). Each word was presented for 2 s, followed by 3 s of blank screen before presentation of the next word (ter Doest and Semin, 2005 ). A total of 60 words were presented for study, in a different random order to each participant.…”

“…Coding procedures for recall responses were adopted from those used in previous studies (e.g., ter Doest and Semin, 2005 ). Responses were judged correct if they were identical to, or were inflectional or misspelled variants of words on the study list (e.g., we accepted shelf for shelves , and plyers for pliers ).…”

“…Of course, given the narrow definition of semantic richness captured by NoF, it was also possible that the difference between high and low NoF words would be too subtle to influence memory accuracy. To investigate these possibilities we chose free recall because an extensive literature shows that this task produces effects of another stimulus-specific property: concreteness (Dukes and Bastian, 1966 ; Paivio and Csapo, 1973 ; Nelson and Schreiber, 1992 ; Paivio et al, 1994 ; Ruiz-Vargas et al, 1996 ; Hamilton and Rajaram, 2001 ; ter Doest and Semin, 2005 ), and we modeled our procedure after the most recent of these studies. To be clear, however, we investigated NoF effects for sets of items for which concreteness, word frequency, familiarity, and contextual diversity was controlled, so any memory effects observed for NoF could be interpreted as incremental to those of each of these other factors.…”