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 intentionalrecall 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.There is now a long history to the general finding that abstract verbal materials are remembered more poorly than concrete materials (see Paivio, 1971Paivio, , 1986. For example, this finding has been shown in studies of paired associates learning (Paivio, 1965), memory for sentences (Brewer, 1975;Marschark & Paivio, 1977), and free recall of unrelated word lists (Christian, Bickley, Tarka, & Clayton, 1978;Rubin, 1980;Rubin & Friendly, 1986), among others. Abstract words are remembered more poorly by children and adults alike (Vellutino & Scanlon, 1985). Stimulus concreteness or, to be more precise, stimulus imageability is one of the most powerful predictors of recall in studies of verbal memory (Rubin, 1983). However, the causal role of imagery in these studies of concreteness effects in verbal memory have been the source of much debate. In this article, we will discuss the emergent predictions of three hypotheses for why abstract words are remembered more poorly than concrete words.The first hypothesis, which we will call the automaticimagery hypothesis, is designed to represent the intuitive view that the sensory information associated with concrete words naturally makes them more resistant to forgetting. This view claims that there are two representational systems associated with concepts in semantic memory: a verbal representation (consisting of verbal associates) and an Preparation of thisarticle was supported in part by Grant BNS-8808453 from the National Science Foundation to the first author. We appreciate the helpful comments that W. Fabricius, R. Fisher, M. Marschark, A. Paivio, and E. Shoben gave us on an earlier version of this paper. Some of the research described in this article was presented at the Southeastern Psychological Association meeting in March 1987. C. Akin is now affiliated with the Banks County, GA, Public School System.Correspondence should be addressed to P....

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