The retrieval of abstract and concrete materials as functions of imagery, mediation, and mnemonic aids

Abstract

This study is areport of an investigation of the interaction between imagery ability and processes employed for facilitating recall. The tasks were assumed to involve contrasting processes through the use of imaginal or verbal mediators and concrete or abstract jingles (mnemonic aids) in memorizing two concrete and two abstract lists of 10 words in each list. The dependent variables were latencies in arriving at an association, number of errors and omissions on immediate recall, and number of errors and omissions on delayed recall. The main effects of imagery ability, favoring high imagers, and of kind of lists favoring concrete lists were significant. In delayed recall there was a significant interaction of mnemonic aid and kind of list. Irnagery ability interacted with mediators to influence Ss' recall. The results were discussed as supporting Paivio's two-stage association model. Paivio (I969) has suggested that the learner, either because he has a preference for using images or because images are more available than words, tends to use an imagery strategy with concrete words. On the other hand, confronted with a task in which he is required to associate abstract terms, the learner employs a strategy emphasizing verbal association.Of a number of experimental procedures used in tests of Paivio's theory, two were of concern in the present study. In one procedure, a jingle ("one is a bun," "two is a shoe," and so on) was employed as a mnemonic aid. Applied to the assumption in the aforegoing paragraph, it would be expected that a jingle consisting of concrete pegwords should facilitate the use of an imagery strategy; a jingle consisting of abstract pegwords should facilitate the use of a verbal strategy.In another procedure, instructions were employed to induce the S to use either an imagery or a verbal-associations strategy when learning the word pairs by use of a mnemonic device (paivio & Yuille, 1969).However, induction of treatments via instructions only may be a weak manipulation. Accordingly, the procedure was modified by Paivio and Foth (1970) by requiring the S, in the imaginal-set treatment, to draw a picture linking the pegword to its serial counterpart in the list to be learned, and by requiring the S, in the verbal-set treatment, to write a sentence using the two words. These methodological variations provide means by which learner strategies can be manipulated. In terms of the initial assumption, it would be expected that imaginal sets would be more easily applied to concrete than to abstract materials, while verbal sets would be more effective for abstract materials than would imaginal sets.In addition to examining the relation between recall *The research reported in this paper was supported by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA Order No. 1269) through the Office of Naval Research under Contract ONR Nonr N00014-67-A-0385-006. and abstractness (or concreteness) of pegwords in mnemonic aids and between recall and mediational strategy, another purpose of the present study was to investigate ...

Effects of Imagery Ability and Instructions on Recall of Information on Spatial Location

“…Subjects often, however, spontaneously generate memory images in response to concrete stimuli which in turn reduces the effectiveness of imagery instructions (Paivio, 1971;Paivio & Yuille, 1967). Research on effects of instruction on imagery is further complicated by studies indicating that memory performance of highly visual imagers improves more than that of subjects low in imagery ability when instructions to image are provided (Ashton, et al, 1978;Di Vesta & Sunshine, 1974;Housner & Hoffman, 1981). Taken together, the findings demonstrate that the effectiveness of imagery instructions varies considerably depending on the experimental variables employed.…”

Interaction of individual differences with visual and verbal elaboration instructions.

“…High-imagery-ability subjects made more correct responses when using an imaginal mediation strategy than when using a verbal mediation strategy, whereas the reverse was true for low-imagery subjects. DiVesta and Sunshine (1974) did not report tests involving verbal ability. However, in an unpublished paper, these same authors (DiVesta & Sunshine, Note 1) discussed a similar study in which subjects were classified post hoc as high or low verbalizers according to their Verbal scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.…”

“…For example, as foreign language vocabulary learning is one of the most frequently cited examples of paired-associate learning, foreign language words were used as stimuli in the current study. As another example, DiVesta and Sunshine (1974), following Paivio and Foth (1970), required subjects to actually construct physical drawings or write out sentences to make explicit the mediating link they were using to connect the mnemonic cue and the response. While there are some educational situations in which such a procedure would be feasible, a strategy that did not require the additional materials and time needed for overt production would seem to be much more widely applicable.…”

What is wrong with imagery questionnaires?

“…To support the hypothesized distinction, Neisser reports that no correlation is found between scores on a traditional imagery questionnaire and performance on a spatial manipulation test. Neisser also points to investigations which show that imagery questionnaires are poor predictors of accuracy of recall in visual memory tasks, whereas, on the other hand, a significant predictor effect is obtained from scores on spatial manipulation tests in relation to performance in memory tasks, and tasks of problem solving (see also DyVesta & Sunshine, 1974).…”