Recall of Concrete and Abstract Word-Pairs: as Tudy of Concreteness Effect
Recall of concrete and abstract word pairs: a study of word concreteness effect
Abstract
This experiment studied the effects of concreteness of unrelated noun pairs on free recall. Paivio’s Dual Coding Theory suggests that memory can encode information in verbal or non-verbal forms, depending on the format of the information, and word concreteness has additive effect on memory performance. This experiment explored whether concrete words are better recalled than abstract words. The design was three conditions, between-participant free-recall experiment. Twenty seven participants took part from a convenience sample. The results showed a significant difference between concrete-concrete and concrete-abstract, and concrete-concrete and abstract-abstract conditions. This indicates that concrete words are better retrieved than abstract words due to associated imagery, which provides another evidence for Dual Coding Theory.
Introduction
The information processing model considers memory as a flow of information via different subsystems (Brace, 2007). Three main processes in memory are encoding, storage and retrieval .Process of encoding refers to registering the information and representing knowledge indifferent forms; storage is the creation of the record of encoded information, and retrieval refers to recognition or recall of the stored information. Many researches agreed that the way information retrieved, depends on how it was encoded and stored (Brace, 2007). The theoretical framework for our experiment has been provided by A.Paivio’s research on dual coding. Dual Coding Theory( DCT )assumes that cognition involves two independent, subsystems: verbal and non-verbal, which are responsible for processing information concerning nonverbal objects, events and language (Paivio,1991,2006).Thus, verbal e.g language, text, audio, and non-verbal(visual,image-based,pictorial),information are processed through different channels. Similar to Paivio, Baddeley and
Abstract
This experiment studied the effects of concreteness of unrelated noun pairs on free recall. Paivio’s Dual Coding Theory suggests that memory can encode information in verbal or non-verbal forms, depending on the format of the information, and word concreteness has additive effect on memory performance. This experiment explored whether concrete words are better recalled than abstract words. The design was three conditions, between-participant free-recall experiment. Twenty seven participants took part from a convenience sample. The results showed a significant difference between concrete-concrete and concrete-abstract, and concrete-concrete and abstract-abstract conditions. This indicates that concrete words are better retrieved than abstract words due to associated imagery, which provides another evidence for Dual Coding Theory.
Introduction
The information processing model considers memory as a flow of information via different subsystems (Brace, 2007). Three main processes in memory are encoding, storage and retrieval .Process of encoding refers to registering the information and representing knowledge indifferent forms; storage is the creation of the record of encoded information, and retrieval refers to recognition or recall of the stored information. Many researches agreed that the way information retrieved, depends on how it was encoded and stored (Brace, 2007). The theoretical framework for our experiment has been provided by A.Paivio’s research on dual coding. Dual Coding Theory( DCT )assumes that cognition involves two independent, subsystems: verbal and non-verbal, which are responsible for processing information concerning nonverbal objects, events and language (Paivio,1991,2006).Thus, verbal e.g language, text, audio, and non-verbal(visual,image-based,pictorial),information are processed through different channels. Similar to Paivio, Baddeley and
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