Bilingual memory representation: A further test of dual coding theory.

Compared incidental recall for words coded as synonyms, translations, and copies in 28 Spanish-English, early and late onset bilingual undergraduates. 24 English-monolingual undergraduates recalled in draw, synonym, and copy conditions. Words in the synonym condition were recalled more than copied words by both groups of Ss, and bilingual Ss recalled imaged and translated words more often than synonyms. No differences were found between early and late onset bilinguals across words. It is argued that a dual coding view offers an explanation for these findings. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Concreteness and semantic repetition effects in free recall: Evidence for dual-coding theory.

Tested the prediction of A. Paivio's (1971, 1976) dual-coding model, which states that semantic-repetition effects will be obtained for concrete but not abstract words. Dual-coding theory also asserts that semantic equivalents are encoded as a combination of separate verbal representations for all words and common imaginal representations for concrete equivalents. 96 undergraduates recalled a list that contained no-repetition, synonym-repetition, and identical-repetition items, half of which were concrete and half of which were abstract. Results show that, for concrete words, recall of synonym- and identical-repetition items did not differ significantly, and both conditions facilitated recall relative to no-repetition items. For abstract words, however, recall of synonym- and no-repetition items did not differ significantly, whereas identical-repetition items facilitated recall relative to both of these conditions. Findings support the prediction and demonstrate the importance of concreteness in semantic-repetition effects. (French abstract) (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Abstract word deficits in aphasia: Evidence from semantic priming.

J.G. and D.E. are nonfluent aphasic patients who appear to have selective problems with abstract words on a variety of standard tests. Such a pattern would normally be interpreted as indicating a central semantic deficit for abstract words. The authors show that this is not the case by means of a semantic priming task that tests for implicit knowledge of the meanings of abstract and concrete words. Spoken word pairs that were either abstract or concrete synonyms (e.g., street-road or luck-chance) were presented; both Ss showed priming for the abstract and concrete pairs. The researchers followed up by asking the Ss to produce definitions to spoken abstract and concrete words; these definitions were also normal. The priming and definition data suggest that the semantic representations of abstract words in these Ss were relatively unimpaired. The researchers found that the Ss have problems only with spoken abstract words in just those tasks where normal controls also have difficulty. In contrast, they clearly have deficits in reading abstract words aloud, which may be due to problems with output phonology. Implications of these data for claims concerning hemispheric differences in the representation of abstract and concrete words are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Concreteness effects in semantic processing: ERP evidence supporting dual-coding theory.

Dual-coding theory argues that processing advantages for concrete over abstract (verbal) stimuli result from the operation of 2 systems (i.e., imaginal and verbal) for concrete stimuli, rather than just 1 (for abstract stimuli). These verbal and imaginal systems have been linked with the left and right hemispheres of the brain, respectively. Context-availability theory argues that concreteness effects result from processing differences in a single system. The merits of these theories were investigated by examining the topographic distribution of event-related potentials (ERPs) in 2 experiments (lexical decision and concrete-abstract classification). The results were most consistent with dual-coding theory. In particular, different scalp distributions of an N400-like negativity were elicited by concrete and abstract words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Concrete words are easier to recall than abstract words: Evidence for a semantic contribution to short-term serial recall.

Immediate serial recall and maximal speech rate were assessed for concrete and abstract words differing in length. Experiment 1 showed large advantages for spoken recall of concrete words that were independent of speech rate. Experiment 2 showed an equivalent effect with written, rather than spoken, recall. Experiment 3 showed that the concreteness effect was still present when recall was backward rather than forward. In all 3 experiments, concrete words enjoyed an advantage that was roughly constant across all serial positions (with the possible exception of the 1st and last items). Experiment 4 used a matching-span procedure and showed that when there was no requirement for linguistic output, the effect of concreteness (but not the effect of word length) was eliminated. It is argued that semantic coding exerts powerful effects in verbal short-term memory tasks that have generally been underestimated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Repetition of semantic comparisons: Temporary and persistent priming effects.

Two experiments tested the involvement of both abstract semantic memory representations and instance-specific memory for feature encoding in repetition effects for a semantic processing task. Experiment 1 showed that a relatively small amount of facilitation (10%–25%) was attributable to memory for instance-specific features (typography) of repeated trials. Although small, this effect showed no decay over repetition lags investigated, suggesting persistent memory for encoded features or encoding processes. Experiment 2 showed that facilitation for semantically related repetitions was short-lived compared with facilitation for lexically exact repetitions. This suggested that priming of abstract semantic memory may be involved in temporary but not persistent repetition effects. Individual differences analyses supported the conclusion that despite the increased semantic complexity of this repetition priming task over those previously used, abstract semantic memory representations were not involved in persistent repetition effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic generalization in French and English bilinguals.

In order to examine between-language generalization (BLG), eight two-syllable French and English words were presented, with half of the words in each language paired with shock. After this conditioning procedure shock was withheld and one translated equivalent of each word was presented. GSRs, digital and cephalic vasomotor activity were recorded. Responses to the translations of the words paired with shock were greater than to the translations of the neutral words. The results were accepted as an illustration of BLG and were discussed in relation to the dynamics of semantic systems and bilingual typing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adult age differences in storage-retrieval processes: A stages-of-learning analysis of developmental interactions in concreteness effects.

In standard list-learning experiments, Age × Treatment interactions have been regarded as an important source of information regarding the locus (storage/retrieval) of age-related memory deficits in adulthood. Unfortunately, these interactions may be spurious byproducts of the use of fixed-trials designs in which age and completeness of learning are confounded. In this paper, we report two experiments in which these problems were explored in the context of item concreteness effects in young and old adults' free recall. In each experiment, eighty 20-year-olds and forty-two 70-year-olds memorized a 16-item list to a stringent acquisition criterion. The manipulations were pictures versus words (Exp. 1) and concrete versus abstract nouns (Exp. 2). The data were analyzed using a recently developed two-stage model that delivers numerical estimates of the impact of these manipulations on the storage and retrieval components of recall. For Experiment 1, the results showed that: (a) for young adults, pictures were easier to store and retrieve than words; (b) for old adults, there was a pictorial superiority effect at storage but a marked pictorial inferiority effect at retrieval; and (c) although younger adults were better than older adults at storing pictures and words and at retrieving pictures, older adults were better than younger adults at retrieving words. For Experiment 2, the results showed that: (a) on average, concrete words were easier to store and retrieve than abstract words at both age levels; and (b) on average, although younger adults were better than older adults at storing concrete and abstract words and at retrieving abstract words, older adults were better than younger adults at retrieving concrete words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of bilingualism, aging, and semantic relatedness on memory under divided attention.

We examined how encoding and retrieval processes were affected by manipulations of attention, and whether the degree of semantic relatedness between words in the memory and distracting task modulated these effects. We also considered age and bilingual status as mediating factors. Monolingual and bilingual younger and older adults studied a list of words from a single semantic category presented auditorily, and later free recalled them aloud. During either study or retrieval, participants concurrently performed a distracting task requiring size decisions to words from either the same or a different semantic category as the words in the memory task. The greatest disruptions of memory from divided attention (DA) were for encoding rather than retrieval. The effect of semantic relatedness was significant only for DA at encoding. Older age and bilingualism were associated with lower recall scores in all conditions, but these factors did not influence the magnitude of memory interference. The results suggest that encoding is more sensitive to semantic similarity in a distracting task than is retrieval. The role of attention at encoding and retrieval is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Concreteness-dependent associative priming: Separate lexical organization for concrete and abstract words.

Four experiments used associated, unrelated, and neutral ({blank}–word) pairs that varied on prime and target concreteness. In Experiment 1, associated targets were named faster than neutral targets when primes and targets were homogeneous for concreteness (i.e., concrete–concrete or abstract–abstract), but not when they were heterogeneous (i.e., concrete–abstract or abstract–concrete). Experiments 2 and 3, using lexical decision, showed priming for all pairs irrespective of prime and target concreteness. In Experiment 4, the prime was presented for 16.7 ms, followed immediately by a 168-ms random letter mask. Lexical decision times showed priming similar to that in Experiment 1. If priming in Experiments 1 and 4 reflected lexical processes, whereas priming in Experiments 2 and 3 entailed postlexical processes, then lexical processes may be functionally distinct for concrete versus abstract words. These findings are more consistent with dual-coding than common-coding explanations of concreteness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age-related differences in memory as a function of imagery processing.

The effects of aging on imagery production and use (following the learning of concrete and abstract words) and their relations to subsequent memory performance were explored in 2 experiments. Both experiments demonstrated better free recall of concrete than of abstract words (the concreteness effect). Exp 1 showed this superiority to be greater for young Ss only under explicit imagery instructions. Exp 2 revealed that the advantage of concrete over abstract words reflects the use of differential imagery production. The results are discussed in terms of age differences in imagery utilization and the effects of visual processing on recall. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A test of dual coding theory for bilingual memory.

Presented 33 elementary teachers and 50 female community college students (all of whom varied in French-English bilingual dominance and experience) with (1) pictures to be labeled in English, (2) French words to be translated into English, and (3) English nouns to be copied as they were. Later, Ss were unexpectedly tested for recall. Results replicate and extend those of A. Paivio and W. E. Lambert (see record 1982-09020-001), demonstrating a 3.3:2.4:1 ratio of recall for images to translation equivalents to copying. Results support bilingual dual coding theory as proposed by Paivio and A. Desrochers (see record 1982-02758-001). (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Electrophysiologic dissociations in memory encoding of abstract and concrete words

This study examined memory encoding of auditorily presented abstract and concrete nouns. 22 subjects performed various blocks of a free recall memory task in which lists of 22 either abstract or concrete words had to be memorized. Consistent with a large variety of memory studies, recall performance was better for concrete than for abstract words. When the event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded during study were selectively averaged for those words that were subsequently recalled and those subsequently not recalled, the ERPs were more positive going for words that were subsequently recalled. These Dm effects (Difference due to memory) started around 500 ms post-stimulus and differed in timing and scalp topography for both types of words: For abstract words, they were present in an early (i.e., 600 to 1100 ms) time interval at parieto-occipital electrodes only. In contrast, for concrete words, Dm effects were obtained with a broad topographic distribution in the 600 to 1000 ms time range and were also present in a late time interval (1100 to 1600 ms) at fronto-central recording sites. The topographical dissociations of the Dm effects in the early time interval are taken to reflect the larger distinctiveness of concrete words during encoding, whereas the late effects presumably play a functional role in elaborative processing of concrete words. The results do not agree with models of word concreteness that propose separate processing systems for the two types of words, and rather support those models that propose quantitative differences in the processing of abstract and concrete words.     

Some consequences of violating selection restrictions in concrete and abstract sentences.

Conducted 3 experiments with a total of 280 undergraduates in which content word constituents were reassigned arbitrarily to different sentences in lists of simple sentences. Original and substituted sentences were rated for imagery, comprehensibility, and sensibleness and, in Exps II and III, were tested also for incidental and intentional recall. Substitutions produced a greater ratings decrement for concrete than for abstract sentences, reversing in some cases a comprehensibility and sensibleness superiority found for the original concrete sentences. This finding supports the hypothesis that greater selection restrictions are associated with concrete than with abstract concepts. Consistent with the notion that imaginal coding is relatively insensitive to semantic constraint violations, smaller rating decrements were produced by substitutions under an imaginal coding set than under either a comprehension or a sensibleness set. Differences in constraints fail to account for concrete/abstract differences in recall as indicated by the finding of an unqualified recall superiority for concrete material under all conditions of substitution. (French summary) (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differential effects of normal aging on recollection of concrete and abstract words.

Verbal memory is known to be affected by word features. Concrete words are remembered better than abstract words (concreteness effect), presumably due to the concurrent activation of image-based and/or semantic associations. Vivid remembering during recognition (recollection) has been linked to the hippocampus and is thought to be more affected by healthy aging than familiarity-based recognition. Recent evidence also implicated the hippocampus in the processing of concrete words. Based on these observations, we hypothesized age-related changes in recollection to affect concrete words more than abstract words. This prediction was tested in a cross-sectional design with three consecutive age groups (mean ages 21 years, 42 years, and 61 years). Changes in recollection, but not familiarity, across ages were significantly modulated by word concreteness. Recollection of concrete words showed a steady decline across age, while recollection of abstract words decreased only from young to middle age, leading to a reduced concreteness effect in the oldest group. These findings are consistent with the idea that changes in hippocampally mediated recollective processes during aging affect concrete words more than abstract words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dual-coding, context-availability, and concreteness effects in sentence comprehension: An electrophysiological investigation.

Event-related potentials were recorded in 2 experiments while participants read sentences in a word-by-word congruency judgment task. Sentence final words were either congruent, semantically anomalous (Experiments 1 and 2), or neutral (Experiment 2) with respect to sentence context. Half of all final words referred to concrete and half to abstract concepts. A different scalp distribution of the N400 to concrete and abstract final words was found for anomalous and neutral, but not congruent sentences. Although the interaction of context and concreteness is consistent with the context-availability model, the differential scalp distribution of effects for concrete and abstract words, as well as larger context effects for concrete words, was interpreted as being more consistent with an extended dual-code account of semantic processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comprehension of concrete and abstract words in semantic dementia.

The vast majority of brain-injured patients with semantic impairment have better comprehension of concrete than abstract words. In contrast, several patients with semantic dementia (SD), who show circumscribed atrophy of the anterior temporal lobes bilaterally, have been reported to show reverse imageability effects, that is, relative preservation of abstract knowledge. Although these reports largely concern individual patients, some researchers have recently proposed that superior comprehension of abstract concepts is a characteristic feature of SD. This would imply that the anterior temporal lobes are particularly crucial for processing sensory aspects of semantic knowledge, which are associated with concrete not abstract concepts. However, functional neuroimaging studies of healthy participants do not unequivocally predict reverse imageability effects in SD because the temporal poles sometimes show greater activation for more abstract concepts. The authors examined a case-series of 11 SD patients on a synonym judgment test that orthogonally varied the frequency and imageability of the items. All patients had higher success rates for more imageable as well as more frequent words, suggesting that (1) the anterior temporal lobes underpin semantic knowledge for both concrete and abstract concepts, (2) more imageable items—perhaps because of their richer multimodal representations—are typically more robust in the face of global semantic degradation and (3) reverse imageability effects are not a characteristic feature of SD. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The keyword method and children's learning of foreign vocabulary with abstract meanings.

76 5th-graders were taught the English translations of 20 Spanish nouns; 10 possessed concrete referents and 10 did not. Three different variations of the mnemonic keyword method (imagery, sentence, and imagery-or-sentence) were compared to each other and a no-strategy control group. Each of the 3 keyword variations greatly facilitated Ss' learning of both concrete and abstract words, and no differences were found among the 3 keyword variations. (French abstract) (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ambiguity and synonymy effects in lexical decision, naming, and semantic categorization tasks: Interactions between orthography, phonology, and semantics.

In this article, ambiguity and synonymy effects were examined in lexical decision, naming, and semantic categorization tasks. Whereas the typical ambiguity advantage was observed in lexical decision and naming, an ambiguity disadvantage was observed in semantic categorization. In addition, a synonymy effect (slower latencies for words with many synonyms than for words with few synonyms) was observed in lexical decision and naming but not in semantic categorization. These results suggest that (a) an ambiguity disadvantage arises only when a task requires semantic processing, (b) the ambiguity advantage and the synonymy disadvantage in lexical decision and naming are due to semantic feedback, and (c) these effects are determined by the nature of the feedback relationships from semantics to orthography and phonology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of an imagery mnemonic on second language recall and comprehension.

24 university students with some background in French as a 2nd language used an imagery-based hook mnemonic and rote rehearsal to learn sets of French words. The hook technique involved associating the new items with an overlearned series of French stimulus words and images, which could be retrieved during recall using a number code. The rote condition involved the technique without imagery. The recall items, presented with their translation equivalents on the study trial, varied in familiarity and concreteness. Recall following 1 study trial was much higher for words learned by imagery than by rote. This effect was slightly qualified by familiarity and concreteness, which also affected recall. Translation tests given before and (unexpectedly) 1 day after the recall experiment showed that correct translations of relatively unfamiliar items increased more after study by imagery than after rote study. Thus, imagery simultaneously facilitated both recall and comprehension. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)