Word concreteness and encoding effects on context-dependent discrimination

In three experiments, we investigated the effects of word concreteness and encoding instructions on context-dependent discrimination in verbal contexts, using Murnane, Phelps, and Malmberg's (1999) ICE (item, context, ensemble) theory as the framework Word concreteness was manipulated within participants, and encoding was manipulated between participants. It was hypothesized that the magnitude of context-dependent discrimination would be affected by both concreteness and encoding instructions. Imagery instructions resulted in context-dependent discrimination for both concrete and abstract word pairs across all the experiments. Context-dependent discrimination was observed under rote instructions for concrete and abstract words, particularly when the same context word was paired multiple times with the targets. The results indicated that context-dependent discrimination is not dependent solely on the use of interactive imagery instructions or on word concreteness.