Mechanisms of word concreteness effects in explicit memory: Does context availability play a role?

Abstract

One explanation for why concrete words are recalled better than abstract words is systematic differences across these word types in the availability of context information. In contrast, explanations for the concrete-word advantage in recognition memory do not consider a possible role for context availability. We investigated the extent to which context availability can explain the effects of word concreteness in both free recall (Exp. 1) and item recognition (Exp. 2) by presenting each target word in isolation, in a low-constraint sentence context, or in a high-constraint sentence context at study. Concreteness effects were consistent with those from previous research, with concrete-word advantages in both tasks. Embedding words in sentence contexts with low semantic constraint hurt recall performance but helped recognition performance, relative to presenting words in isolation. Embedding words in sentence contexts with high semantic constraint hurt both recall and recognition performance, relative to words in low-constraint sentences. The effects of concreteness and semantic constraint were consistent for both high- and low-frequency words. Embedding words in high-constraint sentence contexts neither reduced nor eliminated the concreteness effect in recall or recognition, indicating that differences in context availability cannot explain concreteness effects in explicit memory.

Effects of Emotional Valence and Concreteness on Children’s Recognition Memory

“…Both groups produced more false alarms for abstract than for concrete words, and they also showed more accurate discrimination for concrete than abstract words. This recognition memory advantage for concrete words is consistent with previous literature (e.g., Taylor et al, 2019). There may be more retrieval pathways for concrete than abstract words, by virtue of their associated imagery and tactile experience, which affords facilitated explicit memory performance (Paivio, 1991).…”

Distinct roles for the anterior temporal lobe and angular gyrus in the spatiotemporal cortical semantic network

“…The concreteness contrast was chosen, as in a number of previous neuroimaging studies ( Fiebach and Friederici 2004 ; Binder et al 2005 ; Dhond et al 2007 ; Hoffman 2016 ; Gao et al 2019 ), because concrete and abstract words differ with respect to their general semantic processing demands and their reliance on distributed semantic areas ( Binder et al 2005 ; Dhond et al 2007 ). More specifically, the representations of concrete words are thought to be mediated through interactions between the heteromodal semantic system and the brain regions that underlie nonverbal imagery or provide context availability ( Jessen et al 2000 ; Sadoski et al 2006 ; Paivio 1990 ; Hoffman 2016 ; Taylor et al 2019 ). Abstract words, on the other hand, rely more strongly on symbolic semantic representations in the heteromodal regions, and thus can be expected to place more demand on putative hub areas ( Jessen et al 2000 ; Sadoski et al 2006 ; Paivio 1990 ; Hoffman 2016 ; Taylor et al 2019 ).…”

“…More specifically, the representations of concrete words are thought to be mediated through interactions between the heteromodal semantic system and the brain regions that underlie nonverbal imagery or provide context availability ( Jessen et al 2000 ; Sadoski et al 2006 ; Paivio 1990 ; Hoffman 2016 ; Taylor et al 2019 ). Abstract words, on the other hand, rely more strongly on symbolic semantic representations in the heteromodal regions, and thus can be expected to place more demand on putative hub areas ( Jessen et al 2000 ; Sadoski et al 2006 ; Paivio 1990 ; Hoffman 2016 ; Taylor et al 2019 ). Furthermore, superior comprehension of concrete than abstract concepts is a well-established feature of semantic dementia ( Reilly et al 2006 ; Jefferies et al 2009 ; Loiselle et al 2012 ; Hoffman et al 2013 ).…”

Socialness effects in lexical–semantic processing.

“…Our results are consistent with the semantic richness literature (Pexman, 2012), and the idea that “more is better” (Balota et al, 1991, p. 214)—social experience might enrich conceptual representations, which benefits the lexical–semantic processing of social (compared to nonsocial) words. Indeed, there is evidence that words associated with more semantic information enjoy processing benefits across lexical (e.g., Pexman et al, 2008; Siakaluk, Pexman, Aguilera, et al, 2008; Sidhu et al, 2014; Yap et al, 2015), semantic (Bennett et al, 2011; Goh et al, 2016; Siakaluk, Pexman, Sears, et al, 2008), syntactic categorization (e.g., Muraki et al, 2022; Sidhu et al, 2014; Yap & Pexman, 2016), and memory tasks (e.g., Hargreaves et al, 2012; Sidhu & Pexman, 2016; R. S. Taylor et al, 2019).…”