Memory for concrete and abstract words in bilingual speakers

The dual-code hypothesis of Paivio was taken to imply that bilingual speakers should show poorer memory for the language in which concrete words appeared than the language in which abstract words appeared. The results of two experiments with German-English bilinguals, one using a recognition memory procedure and the other using the free recall task, found the opposite state of affairs. Semantic recognition, free recall, and memory for language of occurrence were all found to be superior for concrete words. Two hypotheses were advanced. One, called the "cultural imagery hypothesis," assumes that images may be culture specific, while the other hypothesis interprets the outcome in terms of the relations between stored attributes. An analysis of the experiment as an attribute-memory procedure is presented.     

Context availability and the recall of abstract and concrete words

Predictions of an automatic-imagery, strategic-imagery, and context-availability hypothesis of concreteness effects in free recall were examined. In each experiment, recall of abstract and concrete words controlled for rated context availability was compared with the typical situation in which context availability is confounded with imageability. In Experiment 1, a directed intentional-recall task produced concreteness effects in recall. Experiment 2 compared concreteness effects in recall following three orienting tasks: imagery rating, context-availability rating, and a directed intentional-memory task. Concreteness effects in the context-availability-controlled condition were found following the imagery-rating and the directed intentional-memory tasks, but not after the context-availability-rating task. In Experiment 3, subjects reported the strategies that they used to encode the list. Subjects reporting an imagery strategy showed concreteness effects for words controlled for rated context availability, but those not reporting it did not. These results support a strategic-imagery view of concreteness effects in free recall.     

Free recall of concrete and abstract words in poor and normal readers

The present study compared poor and normal readers in second and sixth grade on free recall of concrete and abstract words. On the basis of the assumption that memory for abstract words relies more heavily upon linguistic coding ability than does memory for concrete words, it was expected that poor readers would have much greater difficulty on recall of abstract words than would normal readers, but would more closely approximate the normal readers on recall of concrete words. The hypothesis was confirmed at the second-grade level but not at the sixth-grade level, wherein the magnitude of group differences on concrete words was comparable to that on abstract words. Post hoc analyses of intrusion errors suggested that the linguistic coding hypothesis may be a viable explanation of reader group differences on memory tasks only at lower age levels.     

Dual coding versus relational processing in memory for concrete and abstract words

In two experiments, participants judged whether nouns fitted particular sentence frames and then received an unanticipated recall test with the sentence frames as cues. Concrete nouns were better recalled than abstract nouns, and nouns presented in meaningful sentence frames were better recalled than nouns presented in anomalous sentence frames. In Experiment 2, performance in a test of free recall was positively related to the concreteness of the nouns but unrelated to the meaningfulness of the sentence frames. The increase in performance from free recall to cued recall was positively related to the meaningfulness of the sentence frames but not significantly related to the concreteness of the nouns. The effects of concreteness and meaningfulness showed no sign of any interaction either in their effects on recall performance or in their effects on the advantage of cued recall over free recall. These results are consistent with the dual-coding theory of imagery and verbal processes but are not consistent with either of two different interpretations of the relational-distinctiveness processing theory.     

Free recall of abstract and concrete words by American and Ghanaian college students

This investigation compared the free recall of concrete and abstract words in American and Ghanaian college students. There were no differences in the total number of words recalled as a function of concreteness or culture. However, recall of concrete words showed a greater improvement across trials for both cultures. Although there was no difference in the amounts of subjective organization exhibited by Ghanaian and American students, there was evidence for a greater serializing tendency among American students. It appears that the major cultural differences typically observed in African-American comparisons of free recall may be overshadowed by increases in the educational level of the subjects.     

The priming effect of translation equivalents across languages for concrete and abstract words

The present study used a masked priming paradigm and two language tasks (lexical decision, semantic categorical judgment) to investigate whether concrete and abstract words share the same degree of conceptual representation across languages for bilinguals. The results showed that the priming effect of translation equivalents did not differ for concrete and abstract words in the lexical decision task, in both prime-target directions (in Experiment 1). The same results were also found in the semantic categorical judgment task in either prime-target direction (in Experiment 2). Our results do not provide support for the representation difference hypothesis of concrete and abstract words of Distributed Representation Model (De Groot, 1992a, 1992b; Van Hell & De Groot, 1998), which assumes that concrete words share more semantic components in the conceptual representations across languages, compared with abstract words. Rather, our findings suggest that both concrete and abstract words have the same degree of overlap in conceptual representations across a bilingual's two languages.     

French norms of imagery for pictures, for concrete and abstract words]

This paper deals with French norms for mental image versus picture agreement for 138 pictures and the imagery value for 138 concrete words and 69 abstract words. The pictures were selected from Snodgrass et Vanderwart's norms (1980). The concrete words correspond to the dominant naming response to the pictorial stimuli. The abstract words were taken from verbal associative norms published by Ferrand (2001). The norms were established according to two variables: 1) mental image vs. picture agreement, and 2) imagery value of words. Three other variables were controlled: 1) picture naming agreement; 2) familiarity of objects referred to in the pictures and the concrete words, and 3) subjective verbal frequency of words. The originality of this work is to provide French imagery norms for the three kinds of stimuli usually compared in research on dual coding. Moreover, these studies focus on figurative and verbal stimuli variations in visual imagery processes.     

Gesturing more diminishes recall of abstract words when gesture is allowed and concrete words when it is taboo

Gesture during speech can promote or diminish recall for conversation content. We explored effects of cognitive load on this relationship, manipulating it at two scales: individual-word abstractness and social constraints to prohibit gestures. Prohibited gestures can diminish recall but more so for abstract-word recall. Insofar as movement planning adds to cognitive load, movement amplitude may moderate gesture effects on memory, with greater permitted- and prohibited-gesture movements reducing abstract-word recall and concrete-word recall, respectively. We tested these effects in a dyadic game in which 39 adult participants described words to confederates without naming the word or five related words. Results supported our expectations and indicated that memory effects of gesturing depend on social, cognitive, and motoric aspects of discourse.     

Repetition priming within and between languages in semantic classification of concrete and abstract words

Although concrete nouns are generally agreed to have shared core conceptual representations across languages in bilinguals, it has been proposed that abstract nouns have separate representations or share fewer semantic components. Conceptual repetition priming methodology was used to evaluate whether translation equivalents of abstract nouns have shared conceptual representations and compare the degree of conceptual overlap for concrete and abstract nouns. Here 72 Spanish–English bilinguals made concrete–abstract decisions on English and Spanish nouns. Both concrete and abstract nouns elicited substantial between-language priming and these effects were of equivalent size, indicating that translation equivalents of both concrete and abstract nouns have shared conceptual representations and that abstract words do not share fewer components. The between-language priming effects and their attenuation relative to within-language priming indicate that the within-language effect is based on facilitation of both word comprehension and semantic decision processes.     

Repetition priming within and between languages in semantic classification of concrete and abstract words

Although concrete nouns are generally agreed to have shared core conceptual representations across languages in bilinguals, it has been proposed that abstract nouns have separate representations or share fewer semantic components. Conceptual repetition priming methodology was used to evaluate whether translation equivalents of abstract nouns have shared conceptual representations and compare the degree of conceptual overlap for concrete and abstract nouns. Here 72 Spanish-English bilinguals made concrete-abstract decisions on English and Spanish nouns. Both concrete and abstract nouns elicited substantial between-language priming and these effects were of equivalent size, indicating that translation equivalents of both concrete and abstract nouns have shared conceptual representations and that abstract words do not share fewer components. The between-language priming effects and their attenuation relative to within-language priming indicate that the within-language effect is based on facilitation of both word comprehension and semantic decision processes.     

Semantic priming with abstract and concrete words: differential asymmetry may be postlexical

We investigated whether abstract and concrete words would be differentially effective in priming lexical decisions to words presented to the right and left visual fields. Under low probability prime conditions, where priming is presumed to reflect a spreading activation process within the lexicon, equivalent priming was obtained in each VF for both abstract and concrete primes. However, when the same words were used in a high probability prime paradigm, abstract primes were much less effective in the LVF than in the RVF, while priming with concrete words did not differ across the visual fields. Since such priming may reflect a postlexical semantic integration stage, the results imply that hemisphere differences for processing abstract and concrete words may arise only after lexical access has occurred, when semantic information retrieved from the lexicon becomes available for subsequent processing.     

Retrieval of concrete words involves more contextual information than abstract words: multiple components for the concreteness effect

The current study used the directed forgetting paradigm in implicit and explicit memory to investigate the concreteness effect. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to explore the neural basis of this phenomenon. The behavioral results showed a clear concreteness effect in both implicit and explicit memory tests; participants responded significantly faster to concrete words than to abstract words. The ERP results revealed a concreteness effect (N400) in both the encoding and retrieval phases. In addition, behavioral and ERP results showed an interaction between word concreteness and memory instruction (to-be-forgotten vs. to-be-remembered) in the late epoch of the explicit retrieval phase, revealing a significant concreteness effect only under the to-be-remembered instruction condition. This concreteness effect was realized as an increased P600-like component in response to concrete words relative to abstract words, likely reflecting retrieval of contextual details. The time course of the concreteness effect suggests advantages of concrete words over abstract words due to greater contextual information.     

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

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, 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.     

The distinctiveness of emotion concepts: a comparison between emotion, abstract, and concrete words

Are the concepts represented by emotion words different from abstract words in memory? We examined the distinct characteristics of emotion concepts in 3 separate experiments. The first demonstrated that emotion words are better recalled than both concrete and abstract words in a free recall task. In the second experiment, ratings of abstract, concrete, and emotion words were compared on concreteness, imageability, and context availability scales. Results revealed a difference between all 3 word types on each of the 3 scales. The third experiment investigated priming in a lexical decision task for homogeneous (abstract-abstract and emotion-emotion) and heterogeneous (abstract-emotion and emotion-abstract) associated word pairs. Priming occurred only for the homogeneous and heterogeneous abstract-emotion word pair conditions. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed in terms of the circumplex, hierarchical, and semantic activation models. The results are most consistent with the predictions of the semantic activation model.     

The Calgary semantic decision project: concrete/abstract decision data for 10,000 English words

Psycholinguistic research has been advanced by the development of word recognition megastudies. For instance, the English Lexicon Project (Balota et al., 2007) provides researchers with access to naming and lexical-decision latencies for over 40,000 words. In the present work, we extended the megastudy approach to a task that emphasizes semantic processing. Using a concrete/abstract semantic decision (i.e., does the word refer to something concrete or abstract?), we collected decision latencies and accuracy rates for 10,000 English words. The stimuli were concrete and abstract words selected from Brysbaert, Warriner, and Kuperman’s (2013) comprehensive list of concreteness ratings. In total, 321 participants provided responses to 1,000 words each. Whereas semantic effects tend to be quite modest in naming and lexical decision studies, analyses of the concrete/abstract semantic decision responses show that a substantial proportion of variance can be explained by semantic variables. The item-level and trial-level data will be useful for other researchers interested in the semantic processing of concrete and abstract words.     

Concreteness effects revisited: The influence of dynamic visual noise on memory for concrete and abstract words

Two experiments are presented that investigate the effects of dynamic visual noise (DVN) on memory for concrete and abstract words. Memory for concrete words is typically superior to that of abstract words and is referred to as the concreteness effect. DVN is a procedure that has been demonstrated to interfere selectively with visual working memory and the generation of images from long-term memory. It was reasoned that if concreteness effects arise because of the ability of the latter to activate visual representations, then DVN should selectively impair memory for concrete words. Experiment 1 found DVN to selectively reduce free recall of concrete words. Experiment 2 investigated recognition memory and found DVN to reduce memory accuracy and remember responses, while increasing know responses to concrete words.     

Qualitative differences in the representation of abstract versus concrete words: Evidence from the visual-world paradigm

In the present visual-world experiment, participants were presented with visual displays that included a target item that was a semantic associate of an abstract or a concrete word. This manipulation allowed us to test a basic prediction derived from the qualitatively different representational framework that supports the view of different organizational principles for concrete and abstract words in semantic memory. Our results confirm the assumption of a primary organizational principle based on association for abstract words, different from the semantic similarity principle proposed for concrete words, and provide the first piece of evidence in support of this view obtained from healthy participants. The results shed light on the representational structure of abstract and concrete concepts.     

Concreteness, context availability, and imageability ratings and word associations for abstract, concrete, and emotion words

Normative values on various word characteristics were obtained for abstract, concrete, and emotion words in order to facilitate research on concreteness effects and on the similarities and differences among the three word types. A sample of 78 participants rated abstract, concrete, and emotion words on concreteness, context availability, and imagery scales. Word associations were also gathered for abstract, concrete, and emotion words. The data were used to investigate similarities and differences among these three word types on word attributes, association strengths, and number of associations. These normative data can be used to further research on concreteness effects, word type effects, and word recognition for abstract, concrete, and emotion words.