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Recognition memory for nouns as a function of abstractness and frequency
Abstract
An operational definition of abstractness in nouns was constructed by using the human discriminative response to identify two points on a scale of abstractness. This scale, consisting of 490 "abstract' and 571 "concrete' nouns, was found to have adequate reliability. When the scale was manipulated as an independent variable, the effect of abstractness on short-term recognition memory was highly significant, "abstract' nouns being less well remembered than "concrete' nouns. Frequency was found to be pertinent variable, independent of abstractness, very frequent nouns being less well remembered than some-what rarer nouns.
... One particular problem in designing an enhanced training programme is that few studies report the content of imagery instructions (Caudill and Weinberg, 1983;Wilkes and Summers, 1984). Furthermore, there is little empirical basis for the design of instructions other than that subjects find it easier to create images of concrete objects as opposed to abstract ones (Gorman, 1961;Paivio, 1969) where concreteness is defined in terms of the ease with which a stimulus provokes an image of an object (Paivio, 1969). Denis (1985) comments that Johnson's (1982) findings indicate that the design of mental imagery instructions should be detailed and as accurate as possible, whilst Qualls (1982) cautions that instructions which are too exphcit may excessively 'direct' the image and impair its quality. ...
... The main guidance to the content of imagery instructions provided by the literature is that subjects find it easier to create images of concrete objects as opposed to abstract ones (Gorman, 1961;Paivio, 1969). For this reason, imagery instructions which focused on the physical attributes of the domain objects, e.g. a patient's size, the nature of physical attachments such as drips, were tested. ...
The experience of Low Back Pain (LBP) is associated with the manual handling of loads. The purpose of training workers to handle loads is to reduce the incidence of handling- related LBP. Training will only be effective if workers transfer taught knowledge from the training situation to the workplace. This thesis is concerned with demonstrating support to the process of designing an effective training programme, such that transfer is improved. To identify the scope of the problem, the effectiveness of a specific training programme was investigated. Physiotherapy students' compliance with training in classroom and workplace settings was compared. Comparison of students' behaviours in the workplace with those of experts revealed deficiencies in some of the students' cognitive behaviours, including their ability to plan their lifting manoeuvres. The data provided the basis for the development of a cognitive model of planning and control - the model of multiple activity control - patient-handling (MMAC-PH) - to support reasoning about enhancements to the training programme such that performance might be improved. The use of the model to support reasoning about possible enhancements to the training programme is explained. From the model's prescriptions, the development of a training programme enhanced by the addition of cognitive training is described. The enhanced training programme was empirically tested in two contexts, by comparing it to the addition of physical training. The first context was that of subjects without a recent previous experience of LBP, whereas the second, more general context, was that of subjects with recent experience of LBP. The results suggested that the model was effective in supporting the prescription of enhancements to the training programme which improve transfer. However, in terms of the differential effects of the prescriptions the findings are not entirely consistent with the model's predictions. Specifically, performance was unexpectedly enhanced with additional physical training. Possible explanations for inconsistencies are offered. The research offers support for the use of model-based reasoning to support the design of training programmes for physical tasks in order to reduce the problem of poor transfer. The main qualification relates to the granularity of the model in terms of its ability to completely discriminate between interventions.
... This "mirror effect" has promising implications for encoding variability. If recognition memory has a negative relationship with word frequency (Gorman, 1961), then an encoding variability account would predict that varying this according to a normal distribution would increase σ o in the UVSD model. Furthermore, if the mean of this distribution were constrained to be approximately equal to that of a comparative set of words with a low variance in their frequency, the overall recognition performance for either set of words would be unlikely to differ. ...
... Therefore, on the basis of these results, there is no evidence for the encoding variability hypothesis in Experiment 3. It should be noted that this lack of evidence reflects the strength of the correlation between word frequency and recognition confidence. This correlation was significant and negative (mean r = −.10 across participants), which was expected given the previously reported negative function of word frequency against memory strength (Gorman, 1961). However, it is possible that realistically, the variance accounted for in this correlation was too small to affect σ o , mirroring the lack of a sizable effect of study duration and trial-to-trial attention in Experiments 1 and 2. Once again, despite our best efforts to create a high-variance manipulation of the encoding variable at hand, no such increase in the variance of old item memory strength occurred as a result. ...
Despite the unequal variance signal-detection (UVSD) model’s prominence as a model of recognition memory, a psychological explanation for the unequal variance assumption has yet to be verified. According to the encoding variability hypothesis, old item memory strength variance (σ o ) is greater than that of new items because items are incremented by variable, rather than fixed, amounts of strength at encoding. Conditions that increase encoding variability should therefore result in greater estimates of σ o . We conducted three experiments to test this prediction. In Experiment 1, encoding variability was manipulated by presenting items for a fixed or variable (normally distributed) duration at study. In Experiment 2, we used an attentional manipulation whereby participants studied items while performing an auditory one-back task in which distractors were presented at fixed or variable intervals. In Experiment 3, participants studied stimuli with either high or low variance in word frequency. Across experiments, estimates of σ o were unaffected by our attempts to manipulate encoding variability, even though the manipulations weakly affected subsequent recognition. Instead, estimates of σ o tended to be positively correlated with estimates of the mean difference in strength between new and studied items ( d), as might be expected if σ o generally scales with d. Our results show that it is surprisingly hard to successfully manipulate encoding variability, and they provide a signpost for others seeking to test the encoding variability hypothesis.
... According to this view, LF words have atypical structural features, which makes them more difficult to process and thus requires more attentional resources. This increased level of attention leads to the well-known LF advantage in recognition (e.g., Gorman, 1961;Gregg, 1976). Mulligan et al. (2014) found that, compared with HF words, the ABE was significantly reduced for LF words, indicating that the processes that create the ABE are redundant with the increased attentional processing that LF words ordinarily receive. ...
... Thus, the evidence is consistent with an abstract or amodal nature of attentionally boosted memories. With regard to word frequency, a standard LF advantage was found in Experiments 2 and 3 (Gorman, 1961;Gregg, 1976) but the ABE was similar in magnitude for HF and LF words (in fact, numerically larger for LF than HF items in both experiments, though not significantly so). Mulligan et al. (2014) reported that the ABE was significantly reduced for LF words compared with HF words. ...
The attentional boost effect (ABE) refers to enhanced memory for information that is learned under conditions of divided attention in which participants encode stimuli while performing a second task involving target monitoring. The present investigation examined the ABE in young and young-old adults in forced-choice recognition (Experiment 1), and in young, young-old, and older-old adults in yes/no recognition that included manipulations of word frequency and study-to-test changes in modality (Experiments 2 and 3). Contrary to previous findings that showed an elimination of the ABE in young-old adults (Bechi Gabrelli, Spataro, Pezzuti, & Rossi-Arnaud, 2018), young-old adults exhibited an ABE whose magnitude did not differ from that of young adults. Older-old adults, however, displayed a reduced ABE compared with the young. The results may be understood by a framework in which age-related cognitive declines create vulnerable boosted memories in the ABE that are more easily disrupted over time than the boosted memories in young adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
... It is possible that familiarity of the exemplars modulates subsequent effect of category familiarity. Studies have shown that stimulus familiarity itself influences memory performance (Deese, 1959;Gorman, 1961;Tulving and Kroll, 1995). In a study by Tulving and Kroll (1995), participants studied words presented in six repetitions and novel words. ...
... The results clarified that the effect of stimulus familiarity only appeared for words from familiar categories, but not from unfamiliar categories. The effect of stimulus familiarity has been verified in recognition tests in many studies (e.g., Deese, 1959;Gorman, 1961;Rao and Proctor, 1984;Kumaran and Maguire, 2007). This is mainly because when a network of prior conceptual knowledge is activated, familiar words are subject to more interference than unfamiliar words (Anderson, 1983). ...
Previous studies have shown that prior knowledge can have both enhancing and detrimental effects on memory for relevant information. Few studies have explored the boundary conditions under which prior knowledge facilitates or interferes with memory processes. In addition, to what extent the effects of prior knowledge change over time is unclear. In this study, we addressed this question by separating category familiarity (i.e., prior conceptual knowledge) and stimulus familiarity at different retention intervals. Participants were tested with a recognition task after they learned four types of words, that is., familiar words from familiar categories (FwordFcate) and unfamiliar categories (FwordUcate) as well as unfamiliar words from familiar (UwordFcate) and unfamiliar categories (UwordUcate). The results showed a significant interaction between category familiarity and word familiarity, that is, unfamiliar words, but not familiar words, from familiar categories were remembered better than those from unfamiliar categories. The enhancing effect of category familiarity depended on the recollection process and remained stable over time. This study suggested that stimulus familiarity modulates the effects of category familiarity on memory performance, and clarified the boundary conditions for the effects of prior knowledge.
... More importantly, psycholinguistic properties are known to influence memory processes. For example, research has shown that high frequency words are better recalled than low frequency words [10], while low frequency words are better recognized [11,12]. Concrete words [11], words that can easily form an image in the mind [13], and words that are high in valence or arousal [14], are also found to be better remembered. ...
... For example, research has shown that high frequency words are better recalled than low frequency words [10], while low frequency words are better recognized [11,12]. Concrete words [11], words that can easily form an image in the mind [13], and words that are high in valence or arousal [14], are also found to be better remembered. Therefore, these variables must be controlled for when words are used as experimental stimuli. ...
Words are frequently used as stimuli in cognitive psychology experiments, for example, in recognition memory studies. In these experiments, it is often desirable to control for the words’ psycholinguistic properties because differences in such properties across experimental conditions might introduce undesirable confounds. In order to avoid confounds, studies typically check to see if various affective and lexico-semantic properties are matched across experimental conditions, and so databases that contain values for these properties are needed. While word ratings for these variables exist in English and other European languages, ratings for Chinese words are not comprehensive. In particular, while ratings for single characters exist, ratings for two-character words—which often have different meanings than their constituent characters, are scarce. In this study, ratings for 292 two-character Chinese nouns were obtained from Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong. Affective variables, including valence and arousal, and lexico-semantic variables, including familiarity, concreteness, and imageability, were rated in the study. The words were selected from a film subtitle database containing word frequency information that could be extracted and listed alongside the resulting ratings. Overall, the subjective ratings showed good reliability across all rated dimensions, as well as good reliability within and between the different groups of participants who each rated a subset of the words. Moreover, several well-established relationships between the variables found consistently in other languages were also observed in this study, demonstrating that the ratings are valid. The resulting word database can be used in studies where control for the above psycholinguistic variables is critical to the research design.
... The commonly accepted wisdom for direct tests can be seen in two summary statements made a decade apart. Kintsch (1970, p. 277) wrote that "while it is known that high-frequency words tend to be recalled better than low-frequency words (Hall, 1954) the opposite relationship holds for recognition (Schwartz & Rouse, 1961;Gorman, 1961;Shepard, 1967)." Mandler (1980, p. 267) made very much the same claim: ...
... In the second experiment, using item recognition and word fragment completion tests, we predicted that word frequency would affect both types of test in the same way. For recognition, this expectation was based on the accumulated literature; for word fragment completion, it derived from the findings of Experiment 1. Experiment 1 demonstrated better word fragment completion of fragments derived from low-frequency words than of those derived from high-frequency words, and we expected to replicate this in Experiment 2. It has also been well established by researchers that recognition shows the same advantage for low-frequency over high-frequency words (Balota & Neely, 1980;Gorman, 1961;Shepard, 1967). Thus, there should be no dissociation in a study involving a direct recognition test and an indirect word fragment completion test. ...
In 3 experiments, the effect of word frequency on an indirect word fragment completion test and on direct free-recall and Yes-no recognition tests was investigated. In Experiment 1, priming in word fragment completion was substantially greater for low-frequency words than for high-frequency words, but free recall was unaffected. Experiment 2 replicated the word fragment completion result and showed a corresponding effect in recognition. Experiment 3 replicated the low-frequency priming advantage in word fragment completion with the set of words that P. L. Tenpenny and E. J. Shoben (1992) had used in reporting the opposite pattern in word fragment completion. Using G. Mandler's (1980) dual-process theory, the authors argue that recognition and word fragment completion tests both rely on within-item integration that influences familiarity, whereas recall hinges on elaboration that influences retrievability.
... Mulligan et al. (2014) subsequently extended the attentional boost procedure to lexical materials. Word frequency effects in recognition are well established, with the usual finding that recognition is better for low than high frequency words (Gorman, 1961). Mulligan et al. noted that low frequency words may attract more attention than high frequency words in an early phase of encoding (Glanzer and Adams, 1990;Criss and Malmberg, 2008). ...
Researchers have suggested that the recognition memory effects resulting from two separate attentional manipulations-attentional boost and perceptual degradation-may share a common cause; namely a transient up-regulation of attention at the time of encoding that leads to enhanced memory performance at the time of retrieval. Prior research has demonstrated that inducing two similar transient shifts of attention simultaneously produces redundant performance in memory. In the present study, we sought to evaluate the combined influence of the attentional boost and perceptual degradation on recognition memory. If these two effects share a common cause, then we ought to observe a redundancy in memory performance, such that these two factors interact. Yet, across four experiments we fail to observe such a redundancy in recognition memory. We evaluate these results using the limited resource model of attention and speculate on how combining transient shifts of attention may produce redundant memory performance in the one case, but non-redundant performance in the other case. KEYWORDS attention, recognition memory, attentional boost effect, divided attention, degradation effect
... The optimized retention probabilities prominently exhibit two key properties: Words are more likely to be preserved when they are recent, and when they have lower word frequency (SI Appendix, Fig. S2). Both biases are well documented in experimental research on human linguistic memory (31)(32)(33). ...
A major goal of psycholinguistic theory is to account for the cognitive constraints limiting the speed and ease of language comprehension and production. Wide-ranging evidence demonstrates a key role for linguistic expectations: A word’s predictability, as measured by the information-theoretic quantity of surprisal, is a major determinant of processing difficulty. But surprisal, under standard theories, fails to predict the difficulty profile of an important class of linguistic patterns: the nested hierarchical structures made possible by recursion in human language. These nested structures are better accounted for by psycholinguistic theories of constrained working memory capacity. However, progress on theory unifying expectation-based and memory-based accounts has been limited. Here we present a unified theory of a rational trade-off between precision of memory representations with ease of prediction, a scaled-up computational implementation using contemporary machine learning methods, and experimental evidence in support of the theory’s distinctive predictions. We show that the theory makes nuanced and distinctive predictions for difficulty patterns in nested recursive structures predicted by neither expectation-based nor memory-based theories alone. These predictions are confirmed 1) in two language comprehension experiments in English, and 2) in sentence completions in English, Spanish, and German. More generally, our framework offers computationally explicit theory and methods for understanding how memory constraints and prediction interact in human language comprehension and production.
... Psycholinguistic attributes The trait attributes that the study focused on are closely linked to the stimulus attributes used in psycholinguistic research (e.g., frequency of occurrence, word length). They can be used in experimental studies to control for their influence on cognitive processing (i.e., word features that influence attention and memory performance, e.g., Gorman, 1961). For example, it has been shown that differences in the valence of such words might correspond to differences in the frequencies with which these words occur in the language (e.g., Bliss et al., 2012). ...
To enable flexible and controlled research on personality, information processing, and interactions in socio-emotional contexts, the availability of highly controlled stimulus material, especially trait words and related attributes, is indispensable. Existing word databases contain mainly nouns and rating dimensions, and their role in studies within socio-emotional contexts are limited. This study aimed to create an English list of traits (ELoT), a database containing 500 trait adjectives rated by a large sample ( n = 822, 57.42% female). The rating categories refer to the perceived valence associated with the traits and their social desirability and observability. Participants of different ages (18 to 65 years of age) and educational levels rated the words in an online survey. Both valence and social desirability ratings showed a bimodal distribution, indicating that most traits were rated either positive (respectively socially desirable) or negative (respectively socially undesirable), with fewer words rated as neutral. For observability, a bell-shaped distribution was found. Results indicated a strong association between valence and social desirability, whereas observability ratings were only moderately associated with the other ratings. Valence and social desirability ratings were not related to participants’ age or gender, but observability ratings were different for females and males, and for younger, middle-aged, and older participants. The ELoT is an extensive, freely available database of trait norms. The large sample and the balanced age and gender distributions allow to account for age- and gender-specific effects during stimulus selection.
... As such, in a within-subject or mixed list design, word frequency has little effect on recall (e.g., Duncan, 1974;Gregg, 1976; see also MacLeod & Kampe, 1996; but see Mendes et al., 2020Mendes et al., , 2021. In contrast to recall tests, on recognition tests, less frequent words are better recognised than more frequent words (Benjamin, 2003;Coane et al., 2011;DeCarlo, 2007;Glanzer & Adams, 1985, 1990Glanzer & Bowles, 1976;Gorman, 1961;Schwartz & Rouse, 1961;Shepard, 1967) whether tested via yes-no recognition (e.g., Balota & Neely, 1980) or forced-choice recognition (e.g., Glanzer & Bowles, 1976). Thus, word frequency can affect the memorability of studied words, although this may depend on how participants are tested. ...
Do the properties of to-be-remembered events influence the ability to remember, and also intentionally forget, these events in similar ways? Prior work has examined how the font size, animacy, emotionality, concreteness (the degree to which a word denotes something perceptible), frequency (how often a word appears in language), and length of to-be-remembered words influence memory. However, it was previously unclear whether the forgetting of information is also influenced by these characteristics. In six experiments, we used an item-method directed forgetting task where we presented participants with to-be-remembered and to-be-forgotten words varying in font size (large or small), animacy (animate or inanimate), emotionality (negative or neutral), concreteness (high or low), frequency (high or low), and word length (long or short). Results revealed that animacy, emotionality, concreteness, frequency, and word length (but not font size) influenced both remembering and forgetting. Together, the present findings indicate that the characteristics of presented words can influence remembering as well as directed forgetting, providing further evidence that the remembering and forgetting processes are governed by similar properties.
... The distinction of the two abstraction types adopted in the current study comes from Spreen and Schulz (1966) indicating that the "definition of abstractness or concreteness in previous studies shows that at least two distinctly different interpretations can be made, " and pointing back to previous collections with judgements on generality by Gorman (1961) and judgements on concreteness as well as generality by Darley et al. (1959). Spreen and Schulz (1966) themselves collected ratings on both abstractness-concreteness and abstractness-specificity (among others) for 329 English nouns, and found a correlation of 0.626 between the ratings of the two abstraction variables. ...
This article provides an in-depth study of distributional measures for distinguishing between degrees of semantic abstraction . Abstraction is considered a “central construct in cognitive science” and a “process of information reduction that allows for efficient storage and retrieval of central knowledge”. Relying on the distributional hypothesis, computational studies have successfully exploited measures of contextual co-occurrence and neighbourhood density to distinguish between conceptual semantic categorisations. So far, these studies have modeled semantic abstraction across lexical-semantic tasks such as ambiguity; diachronic meaning changes; abstractness vs. concreteness; and hypernymy. Yet, the distributional approaches target different conceptual types of semantic relatedness, and as to our knowledge not much attention has been paid to apply, compare or analyse the computational abstraction measures across conceptual tasks. The current article suggests a novel perspective that exploits variants of distributional measures to investigate semantic abstraction in English in terms of the abstract–concrete dichotomy (e.g., glory–banana ) and in terms of the generality–specificity distinction (e.g., animal–fish ), in order to compare the strengths and weaknesses of the measures regarding categorisations of abstraction, and to determine and investigate conceptual differences. In a series of experiments we identify reliable distributional measures for both instantiations of lexical-semantic abstraction and reach a precision higher than 0.7, but the measures clearly differ for the abstract–concrete vs. abstract–specific distinctions and for nouns vs. verbs. Overall, we identify two groups of measures, (i) frequency and word entropy when distinguishing between more and less abstract words in terms of the generality–specificity distinction, and (ii) neighbourhood density variants (especially target–context diversity) when distinguishing between more and less abstract words in terms of the abstract–concrete dichotomy. We conclude that more general words are used more often and are less surprising than more specific words, and that abstract words establish themselves empirically in semantically more diverse contexts than concrete words. Finally, our experiments once more point out that distributional models of conceptual categorisations need to take word classes and ambiguity into account: results for nouns vs. verbs differ in many respects, and ambiguity hinders fine-tuning empirical observations.
... Subjects encode target material-typically word lists in the memory literature but pictures, sentences, narratives, videos, and live events in other literatures-after which they are instructed to identify which items are old among a series of test items. In early work (Gorman, 1961;Kintsch, 1966Kintsch, , 1967Parks, 1966), the test items belonged to two incompatible reality states: old (encoded) and new (not encoded). Some years ago, Wallace (1980) presented cogent methodological arguments that administering new items is unnecessary for measuring the perception of oldness; that accurate measurement is possible with only old items and that this procedure is more relevant to the concept of recognition. ...
In recognition memory, anything that is objectively new is necessarily not-old, and anything that is objectively old is necessarily not-new. Therefore, judging whether a test item is new is logically equivalent to judging whether it is old, and conversely. Nevertheless, a series of 10 experiments showed that old? and new? judgments did not produce equivalent recognition accuracy. In Experiments 1-4, wherein subjects made old? or new? judgments about test items, new? judgments yielded more accurate performance for old items than old? judgments did, and old? judgments yielded more accurate performance for new items than new? judgments did. This same violation of logical equivalence was observed in Experiments 5-10, wherein subjects made similar? judgments as well as old? and new? ones. In short, old? and new? judgments displayed consistent Judgment × Item crossovers, rather than equivalence. Response latencies were used to test the hypothesis that Judgment × Item crossovers were due to certain judgment-item combinations provoking more deliberate, thorough retrieval than other combinations. There was no support for that hypothesis, but the data were consistent with an earlier theory, which posits that latency depends on the extent to which judgments or items slant retrieval toward accessing verbatim traces. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
... A key difficulty in the causal interpretation of SMEs is that several stimulus-, task-and context-related variables are known to do exactly that. For instance, the concreteness of a word is known to affect both a word's probability of recognition and recall on a list (Stoke, 1929;Gorman, 1961;Paivio, 1963) as well as neural activity in several brain regions during visual presentation (Binder et al., 2009;Wang et al., 2010). It is possible that some of this neural activity is only involved in word processing and does not directly affect the memory quality. ...
Over 40 years of accumulated research has detailed associations between neuroimaging signals measured during a memory encoding task and later memory performance, across a variety of brain regions, measurement tools, statistical approaches and behavioral tasks. But the interpretation of these Subsequent Memory Effects (SMEs) remains unclear: if the identified signals reflect cognitive and neural mechanisms of memory encoding then the underlying neural activity must be causally related to future memory. However, almost all previous SME analyses do not control for potential confounders of this causal interpretation, such as serial position and item effects. We collect a large fMRI dataset and use a novel experimental design and analysis approach that allows us to statistically adjust for all exogenous confounding variables. We find that, using standard approaches without adjustment, we replicate several univariate and multivariate subsequent memory effects and are able to predict memory performance across people. However, we are unable to identify any signal that reliably predicts subsequent memory after adjusting for confounding variables, bringing into doubt the causal status of these effects. We apply the same approach to subjects' judgments of learning collected during an encoding period, and show that these behavioral measures of encoding quality do predict memory after adjustments, suggesting that it is possible to measure signals at the time of encoding that reflect causal mechanisms but that existing neuroimaging measures may not have the precision and specificity to do so.
... Concreteness refers to the extent to which the concept denoted by a word refers to a perceptible entity (Paivio & Begg, 1971). More concrete words are easier to remember than more abstract words (Gorman, 1961;Paivio, 2013). We used norms from . ...
People often misrecognize objects that are similar to those they have previously encountered. These mnemonic discrimination errors are attributed to shared memory representations (gist) typically characterized in terms of meaning. In two experiments, we investigated multiple semantic and perceptual relations that may contribute: at the concept level, a feature-based measure of concept confusability quantified each concept's tendency to activate other similar concepts via shared features; at the item level, rated item exemplarity indexed the degree to which the specific depicted objects activated their particular concepts. We also measured visual confusability over items using a computational model of vision, and an index of color confusability. Participants studied single (Experiment 1, N = 60) or multiple (Experiment 2, N = 60) objects for each basic-level concept, followed by a recognition memory test including studied items, similar lures, and novel items. People were less likely to recognize studied items with high concept confusability, and less likely to falsely recognize their lures. This points to weaker basic-level semantic gist representations for objects with more confusable concepts because of greater emphasis on coarse processing of shared features relative to fine-grained processing of individual concepts. In contrast, people were more likely to misrecognize lures that were better exemplars of their concept, suggesting that enhanced basic-level semantic gist processing increased errors due to gist across items. False recognition was also more frequent for more visually confusable lures. The results implicate semantic similarity at multiple levels and highlight the importance of perceptual as well as semantic relations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
... When designing cognitive tasks using emotional word stimuli, these objective characteristics of word length and word frequency are typically major factors in affective cognitive processing. For example, words with a high frequency are better remembered in free recall tasks than words with a low frequency and the reverse is true for recognition tasks, in which low-frequency words are better recognized than high-frequency words (Gorman, 1961;Schulman, 1967). Given the link between objective word characteristics, such as word frequency and word length, and the memorability for these words, research on emotional memory for words as to-be-remembered material needs to control for these potentially confounding variables. ...
The development of lists of emotional stimuli has fostered our understanding about emotional processes by facilitating the selection of appropriate stimuli for experimental settings and comparison across experimental settings. To assist in the decision-making process of experimental work, we propose the emotion matrix as a simplified way of comparing different types of stimuli on their ecological validity, temporal resolution, controllability, complexity, and emotional intensity. Based on these five characteristics in the emotion matrix, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using words, images, faces, or film clips in emotion research. By doing so, we present some of the major available lists of words, images, faces, and film clips and we describe major characteristics of these sets.
... The present experiment was designed to study the influence of symbol representativeness and concreteness of its word label on the guessability of Blissymbols. The psychological variable of concreteness of the word label was studied because it has been previously demonstrated that the concreteness of a stimulus correlates positively with performance on a variety of tasks that are relevant to memory studies (for reviews, see Borkowski & Eisener, 1968;Gorman, 1961;Jampolsky, 1950;Madigan & Lawrence, 1980;Olver, 1965;Paivio & Yarmey, 1966). ...
Twenty student volunteers, naive to Blissymbols, were asked to “guess” the meaning of 64 Blissymbols, each presented without their word gloss. The symbols and their verbal labels were each varied orthogonally on two dimensions of representativeness of the symbol (high/low) and concreteness of the word they were designed to represent (high/low). The representativeness values were obtained from the norms reported by Yovetich and Paivio (1980), while the concreteness values were obtained from the norms reported by the Paivio, Yuille, and Madigan (1968). The subjects' responses were subsequently scored as either “exact/synonymous” or “other.” Results of the analysis of subjects' mean responses for the two dimensions of Blissymbols, using paired f-tests, revealed that the guessability of a symbol's gloss was significantly affected by the dimension of representativeness. The results have implications for understanding the psychological attributes of the graphic representations which are used in clinical and/or research methodologies, and they support the findings of earlier research dealing with Blissymbols as well as natural language logographs (i.e., Chinese and Japanese).
Keywords:aided symbols , Blissymbols , concreteness , guessability , representativeness
... The present experiment was designed to study the influence of symbol representativeness and concreteness of its word label on the guessability of Blissymbols. The psychological variable of concreteness of the word label was studied because it has been previously demonstrated that the concreteness of a stimulus correlates positively with performance on a variety of tasks that are relevant to memory studies (for reviews, see Borkowski & Eisener, 1968;Gorman, 1961;Jampolsky, 1950;Madigan & Lawrence, 1980;Olver, 1965;Paivio & Yarmey, 1966). ...
... (e.g., Huber, Tomlinson, Jang, & Hopper, 2015;Mensink & Raaijmakers, 1988, 1989Raaijmakers & Phaf, 1999;Sirotin, Kimball, & Kahana, 2005;Tomlinson, Huber, Rieth, & Davelaar, 2009) and was later applied to recognition (Gillund & Shiffrin, 1984). The latter version of SAM was able to account for a number of benchmark findings in the recognition literature including the wordfrequency effect (Allen & Garton, 1968;Glanzer & Bowles, 1976;Gorman, 1961;Schulman, 1967), the listlength effect (Strong, 1912;Underwood, 1978), and increases in recognition performance with increased study time (Ratcliff & Murdock, 1976). ...
Shiffrin and Steyvers (1997) introduced a model of recognition memory called retrieving effectively from memory (REM) and successfully applied it to a number of basic memory phenomena. REM incorporates differentiation, wherein item repetitions are accumulated in a single mnemonic trace rather than separate traces. This allows REM to account for several benchmark findings, including the null list-strength effect in recognition (Ratcliff, Clark, & Shiffrin, 1990). The original REM treated massed and spaced repetitions identically, which prevents it from predicting a mnemonic advantage for spaced over massed repetitions (i.e., the spacing effect). However, Shiffrin and Steyvers discussed the possibility that repetitions might be represented in a single trace only if the subject identifies that the repeated item was previously studied. It is quite plausible that subjects would notice repetitions more for massed than for spaced items. Here we show that incorporating this idea allows REM to predict three important findings in the recognition memory literature: (1) the spacing effect, (2) the finding of slightly positive list-strength effects with spaced repetitions, as opposed to massed repetitions or increased study time, and (3) list-strength effects that have been observed using very large strong-to-weak ratios (see Norman, 2002).
... This practice is consistent with research in cognitive psychology. This body of research suggests that concrete words are better remembered than abstract words (Gorman, 1961) and that it is easier to learn associations between high-imaginability words (e.g., "car" and "gate") than low-imaginability words (like "aspect" and "fraction"; Madan et al., 2010;Caplan and Madan, 2016). Concrete examples can activate prior knowledge, which can, in turn, facilitate learning (Reed and Evans, 1987). ...
Cognitive science research on learning and instruction is often not directly connected to discipline-based research. In an effort to narrow this gap, this essay integrates research from both fields on five learning and instruction strategies: active retrieval, distributed (spaced) learning, dual coding, concrete examples, and feedback and assessment. These strategies can significantly enhance the effectiveness of science instruction, but they typically do not find their way into the undergraduate classroom. The implementation of these strategies is illustrated through an undergraduate science course for nonmajors called Science in Our Lives. This course provides students with opportunities to use scientific information to solve real-world problems and view science as part of everyday life.
... The second dimension is included for exploratory purposes. It is related to research in psycholinguistics, which shows that concrete words are easier to process and to recognise than more abstract words (Gorman 1961;Hargis and Gickling 1978;Paivio 1986). As a result, the advantages in the processing of words for concrete concepts may correlate with a larger degree of psychological wiring in of these concepts, which may in turn interact with the amount of lexical variation in the dialect data under scrutiny. ...
Lexical diversity, the amount of lexical variation shown by a particular concept, varies between concepts. For the concept drunk , for instance, nearly 3000 English expressions exist, including blitzed, intoxicated , and hammered . For the concept sober , however, a significantly smaller number of lexical items is available, like sober or abstinent . While earlier variation studies have revealed that meaning-related concept characteristics correlate with the amount of lexical variation, these studies were limited in scope, being restricted to one semantic field and to one dialect area, that of the Limburgish dialects of Dutch. In this paper, we investigate whether the impact of concept characteristics, viz. vagueness, lack of salience and proneness to affect, is manifest in a similar way in other dialects and other semantic fields. In particular, by extending the scope of the earlier studies to other carefully selected semantic fields, we investigate the generalizability of the impact of concept characteristics to the lexicon as a whole. The quantitative approach that we employ to measure concept characteristics and lexical diversity methodologically advances the study of linguistic variation. Theoretically, this paper contributes to the further development of Cognitive Sociolinguistics by showcasing how meaning can be a source of lexical diversity.
... The reason is that Bthe probability of dual coding (and recall) decreases from pictures to concrete words to abstract words because subjects in memory experiments are highly likely to name pictures of familiar objects covertly during learning, somewhat less likely to image to concrete nouns, and least likely to image to abstract nouns^ (Paivio, 1991, p. 265). Paivio and Csapo (1969) observed this ordering in free recall, and the concreteness effect has been observed in many different tests, including recognition (Gorman, 1961), paired associates (Paivio, 1967), serial recall (Walker & Hulme, 1999), serial recognition (Chubala, Surprenant, Neath, & Quinlan, 2018), and free reconstruction of order (Neath, 1997). ...
A well-established phenomenon in the memory literature is the picture superiority effect—the finding that, all else being equal, memory is better for pictures than for words (Paivio & Csapo, 1973). Theorists have attributed pictures’ mnemonic advantage to dual coding (Paivio, 1971), conceptual distinctiveness (Hamilton & Geraci, 2006), and physical distinctiveness (Mintzer & Snodgrass, 1999). Here, we present a novel test of the physical-distinctiveness account of picture superiority: If the greater physical variability of pictures relative to words is responsible for their mnemonic benefit, then increasing the distinctiveness of words and/or reducing the physical variability of pictures should reduce or eliminate the picture superiority effect. In the present experiments we increased word distinctiveness by varying font style, font size, color, and capitalization. Additionally, in Experiment 3 we reduced the distinctiveness of pictures by presenting black-and-white pictures with similar orientations. In Experiment 4, a forced choice procedure was used in which subjects were asked to identify the form that each probe had taken during the study phase. The results were consistent with the distinctiveness prediction and, notably, were inconsistent with dual coding.
... For instance, an ad for a cup of noodles that uses concrete information may say 'cooks in only 3 min.' In contrast, abstract information is imprecise and vague, and does not include physical referents (Gorman 1961). Ads created using abstract written information are ambiguous and less specific. ...
This study examined whether and when information type (concrete vs. abstract) is an effective advertising strategy for fair trade products. The results of two experimental studies demonstrated that when a fair trade ad features a negative image and message (i.e., visual-written congruency), a concrete message results in greater consumer curiosity and willingness to pay a higher price for fair trade products relative to an abstract message. In contrast, when a negative image with a positive message (i.e., visual-written incongruency) is used, an abstract message increases consumer’s curiosity and willingness to pay a higher price. However, information type effects on consumers’ perceptions were not significant when a positive image appeared in the fair trade ad. Our findings suggest that advertisers who promote fair trade products should consider the combination of information and visual-written (in)congruency, as proper selection is likely to increase a consumer’s curiosity and willingness to pay a premium for fair trade products.
... Concreteness and frequency. While concreteness measures correlate with human judgment better than frequency, we do expect some correlation between a word's frequency and its concreteness (Gorman, 1961). In all cases, we observe a moderate-to-strong positive correlation between infrequency and concreteness (ρ wiki , ρ coco , ρ f lickr , ρ bl = .06, ...
... Concreteness and frequency. While concreteness measures correlate with human judgment better than frequency, we do expect some correlation between a word's frequency and its concreteness (Gorman, 1961). In all cases, we observe a moderate-to-strong positive correlation between infrequency and concreteness (ρ wiki , ρ coco , ρ f lickr , ρ bl = .06, ...
Multimodal machine learning algorithms aim to learn visual-textual correspondences. Previous work suggests that concepts with concrete visual manifestations may be easier to learn than concepts with abstract ones. We give an algorithm for automatically computing the visual concreteness of words and topics within multimodal datasets. We apply the approach in four settings, ranging from image captions to images/text scraped from historical books. In addition to enabling explorations of concepts in multimodal datasets, our concreteness scores predict the capacity of machine learning algorithms to learn textual/visual relationships. We find that 1) concrete concepts are indeed easier to learn; 2) the large number of algorithms we consider have similar failure cases; 3) the precise positive relationship between concreteness and performance varies between datasets. We conclude with recommendations for using concreteness scores to facilitate future multimodal research.
... Words that are more concrete are both recognized and recalled better than abstract words (Gorman, 1961;e.g., 'button' and 'bound,' respectively). Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that information that is more concrete and imageable enhances the learning of associations, even with abstract content (Caplan & Madan, 2016;Madan, Glaholt, & Caplan, 2010;Paivio, 1971 Since abstract concepts are harder to grasp than concrete information (Paivio, Walsh, & Bons, 1994), it follows that teachers ought to illustrate One concern with using concrete examples is that students might only remember the examplesespecially if they are particularly memorable, such as fun or gimmicky examplesand will not be able to transfer their understanding from one example to another, or more broadly to the abstract concept. ...
The science of learning has made a considerable contribution to our understanding of effective teaching and learning strategies. However, few instructors outside of the field are privy to this research. In this tutorial review, we focus on six specific cognitive strategies that have received robust support from decades of research: spaced practice, interleaving, retrieval practice, elaboration, concrete examples, and dual coding. We describe the basic research behind each strategy and relevant applied research, present examples of existing and suggested implementation, and make recommendations for further research that would broaden the reach of these strategies.
... It has long been recognized that abstract vocabulary is more difficult to learn and remember than concrete vocabulary for both native speakers (e.g., Gorman, 1961;Paivio, 1965;Stoke, 1929) and foreign or second language learners (e.g., de Groot & Keijzer, 2000;Ellis & Beaton, 1993;van Hell & Mahn, 1997). Paivio's dual-coding theory mentioned above gives a plausible interpretation to this finding based on learners' self-reported strategies for encoding these two classes of words (see Paivio, Yuille, & Smythe, 1966). ...
This chapter reports a research study that investigated the effectiveness of multimedia vocabulary annotations (MVAs) in facilitating acquisition of second language (L2) abstract vocabulary. Twenty-one collegiate L2 students read a hypermedia passage that contained marginal MVAs for eighteen unknown abstract words. Their knowledge of these words was assessed immediately after the reading activity and twelve days afterwards. The quantitative data from vocabulary assessments indicated that these students neither acquired more vocabulary knowledge nor retained this knowledge better by using MVAs than using traditional text-only annotations. The qualitative data collected from two questionnaires suggested that the participants had applied various strategies for assessing MVAs and they had encountered certain difficulties in understanding the visuals. The results are interpreted based on multimedia learning and visual perception theories. The implications of the results for designing multimedia L2 reading and listening materials are discussed.
... Uma dissociação entre os testes explícitos, reconhecimento e recordação, é observada: quanto maior for a frequência da palavra, maior será a probabilidade de ser recuperada (Hall, 1954;Mandler, Goodman, & Wilkes-Gibbs,1982;Sumby, 1963). O oposto é observado no reconhecimento: palavras mais raras na língua são mais provavelmente reconhecidas em uma lista que também contenha palavras com alta frequência (Glanzer & Bowles, 1976;Gorman, 1961). ...
RESUMO Normas do Tamanho da Categoria (TC) para 906 palavras da língua portuguesa são apresentadas. TC é igual ao número de associadas diferentes de uma palavra produzidas por, pelo menos, dois participantes. As associadas foram coletadas através da técnica de associação livre considerando-se, somente, a primeira resposta. Setecentos e cinquenta e seis universitários de diferentes instituições de ensino superior e cursos participaram do estudo, sendo que as associadas de cada pista foram produzidas por, pelo menos, 100 participantes. Os resultados mostraram que TC apresenta uma distribuição muito próxima da normalidade e é ortogonal às medidas de concretude, frequência de ocorrência da palavra, valência e alerta emocionais, cujos valores também são apresentados para cada palavra.
... Esse panorama impõe restrições ao uso desses estímulos verbais na pesquisa, considerando a necessidade de controlar ou manipular o efeito de diferentes atributos no desempenho em diferentes paradigmas experimentais. Trabalhos pioneiros mostraram, por exemplo, que a ausência de controle sobre frequência de ocorrência das palavras nos testes de recordação e reconhecimento produz um viés na taxa de acertos em função da interação entre o tipo de teste e a frequência (Gorman, 1961;Hall, 1954) ou na magnitude do efeito de geração (Nairne, Pusen & Widner, 1985). Vieses também podem ser induzidos no desempenho de tarefas que envolvem processos linguísticos, como a compreensão e leitura, se o delineamento não observar a concretude das palavras (Haberlandt & Graesser, 1985;Sadoski & Paivio, 2001). ...
RESUMO Normas de associação para 1004 palavras do português brasileiro são apresentadas. Aplicando-se o paradigma da Associação Livre, coletou-se a primeira palavra que viesse à mente dos participantes, evitando-se efeitos de inibição e encadeamento de respostas. Associadas de cada pista foram produzidas por um mínimo de 100 participantes. Oriundos de IES pública e privada, matriculados em 44 cursos, 871 estudantes universitários participaram da coleta. As normas relatam a Força Associativa Direta de todas as associadas, e várias incluem a Força Associativa Reversa. O número de associadas por pista variou de 2 a 26, sendo que as palavras mais fortemente associadas ocuparam as primeiras seis posições associativas. Discutem-se a generalidade e a validade de normas de associação.
... In many perceptual and production tasks, high frequency words are markedly advantaged, posting both faster reaction times and higher accuracy in tests of lexical decision (Scarborough, Cortese, & Scarborough, 1977), naming (Broadbent, 1967;Forster & Chambers, 1973), and perceptual identification (Morton, 1969). In episodic tasks, the story is more complicated, with the standard finding being that high frequency words are better recalled in pure lists (Deese, 1960), but low frequency words are better recalled in mixed lists (Gregg, 1976) and better recognized (Gorman, 1961;Kinsbourne & George, 1974). When processing words in sentences, higher frequency benefits speed of processing in both first-pass and later eye movements (Inhoff & Rayner, 1986;Rayner & Duffy, 1986; see Plummer, Perea, & Rayner, 2014 for a review). ...
Classic accounts of lexical organization posit that humans are sensitive to environmental frequency, suggesting a mechanism for word learning based on repetition. However, a recent spate of evidence has revealed that it is not simply frequency but the diversity and distinctiveness of contexts in which a word occurs that drives lexical organization. This chapter provides an in-depth evaluation of new research on contextual diversity, integrating evidence from word recognition, semantic memory, episodic memory, and information retrieval. The aggregate evidence suggests an expectancy–congruency learning mechanism that updates lexical representations based on the fit between the current contents of memory and the information in the local environmental context. This learning mechanism produces a well-structured lexicon that is adapted to the demands of lexical retrieval and processing.
... When designing cognitive tasks using emotional word stimuli, these objective characteristics of word length and word frequency are typically major factors in affective cognitive processing. For example, words with a high frequency are better remembered in free recall tasks than words with a low frequency and the reverse is true for recognition tasks, in which low-frequency words are better recognized than high-frequency words (Gorman, 1961;Schulman, 1967). Given the link between objective word characteristics, such as word frequency and word length, and the memorability for these words, research on emotional memory for words as to-be-remembered material needs to control for these potentially confounding variables. ...
The development of lists of emotional stimuli has fostered our understanding about emotional processes by facilitating the selection of appropriate stimuli for experimental settings and comparison across experimental settings. To assist in the decision-making process of experimental work, we propose the emotion matrix as a simplified way of comparing different types of stimuli on their ecological validity, temporal resolution, controllability, complexity, and emotional intensity. Based on these five characteristics in the emotion matrix, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using words, images, faces, or film clips in emotion research. By doing so, we present some of the major available lists of words, images, faces, and film clips and we describe major characteristics of these sets.
... Ideally, one might expect a model to provide similar correlations and coefficients of multiple determination (R²) as reported for the reliability of the corresponding human ratings when compared across studies. For instance, Paivio et al (1968) compared 245 words with human ratings for concreteness to those reported by Gorman (1961) and reported an r = .870, r² = .756. ...
... Therefore, the current research, which aims to understand memory together with metamemory performance in cued and uncued recall of paired associates, considers that the generate-recognize theory could be a fruitful tool to understand memory as well as metamemory processes at recall. Such importance was not only because it has historically become a functional alternative to the idea that recall and recognition are single processes as proposed by threshold theory (Postman, 1963;Mandler, Pearlstone, & Koopsman, 1969) and critically discarded by the frequency effect (frequent words are recalled better than they are recognized and the infrequent words are recognize better than they are recalled; see e.g., Gorman, 1961;May & Tryk, 1970), but also because it gives much more space to understand metacognitive process instead of direct access view (single-route), which is the prominent counterpart of generate-recognize approach (dual-route). Furthermore, the current research aims to investigate the effect of organization of memory (e.g., categorization), which is a well-grounded memory enhancement method of memory, not only on memory but also metacognitive monitoring performance as its effects on metamemory are not as clear as on memory performance. ...
The current research aimed to answer two main research questions. First, do variations in report-criterion option have differential effects on observing what is indeed remembered? Second, does increasing the inter-relatedness between target items have the same facilitative effect on metamemory just like it does on retrieval, or does it deteriorate in the same way as metacognitive monitoring measured by type-2 signal detection theory (dissociation)? Contrary to some earlier findings, Experiments 1 and 2 showed that participants do indeed withhold some correct responses due to the stringent report criterion. As a result, they report more correct responses when report option is maximally liberal (e.g., forced report) compared to a stringent report-criterion (freereport) particularly in uncued recall (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 found that when participants are encouraged to study cue-target pairs by focusing on targets more, intertarget association (ITA) is utilised to retrieve target items at retrieval. Thus, whilst retrieval of targets is facilitated, monitoring of the responses is not. Experiment 4 clearly showed a dissociation between memory and metacognitive monitoring due to high-ITA. Experiment 5, then, confirmed that the dissociation emerges due to the utilization of ITA by showing that it is attenuated in cued recall via ‘individuating’ the pairs (e.g., by interactive imagery). Confirming that the semantic context in which the target items studied is the critical factor to yield the observed dissociation, Experiment 6 showed that it is a strategic process that leads to the dissociation rather than solely an automatic process that facilitates retrieval of related targets by semantic activation. The results of the experiments were in line with the expectations of generate-recognize models (e.g., Bahrick, 1970) and showed that type-2 signal detection theory, which is based on this model, is an effective tool to investigate both memory and metamemory performance. The results were discussed with regards to the related literature.
... It has long been recognized that abstract vocabulary is more difficult to learn and remember than concrete vocabulary for both native speakers (e.g., Gorman, 1961;Paivio, 1965;Stoke, 1929) and foreign or second language learners (e.g., de Groot & Keijzer, 2000;Ellis & Beaton, 1993;van Hell & Mahn, 1997). Paivio's dual-coding theory mentioned above gives a plausible interpretation to this finding based on learners' self-reported strategies for encoding these two classes of words (see Paivio, Yuille, & Smythe, 1966). ...
This chapter reports a research study that investigated the effectiveness of multimedia vocabulary annotations (MVAs) in facilitating acquisition of second language (L2) abstract vocabulary. Twenty-one collegiate L2 students read a hypermedia passage that contained marginal MVAs for eighteen unknown abstract words. Their knowledge of these words was assessed immediately after the reading activity and twelve days afterwards. The quantitative data from vocabulary assessments indicated that these students neither acquired more vocabulary knowledge nor retained this knowledge better by using MVAs than using traditional text-only annotations. The qualitative data collected from two questionnaires suggested that the participants had applied various strategies for assessing MVAs and they had encountered certain difficulties in understanding the visuals. The results are interpreted based on multimedia learning and visual perception theories. The implications of the results for designing multimedia L2 reading and listening materials are discussed.
Over 40 y of accumulated research has detailed associations between neuroimaging signals measured during a memory encoding task and later memory performance, across a variety of brain regions, measurement tools, statistical approaches, and behavioral tasks. But the interpretation of these subsequent memory effects (SMEs) remains unclear: if the identified signals reflect cognitive and neural mechanisms of memory encoding, then the underlying neural activity must be causally related to future memory. However, almost all previous SME analyses do not control for potential confounders of this causal interpretation, such as serial position and item effects. We collect a large fMRI dataset and use an experimental design and analysis approach that allows us to statistically adjust for nearly all known exogenous confounding variables. We find that, using standard approaches without adjustment, we replicate several univariate and multivariate subsequent memory effects and are able to predict memory performance across people. However, we are unable to identify any signal that reliably predicts subsequent memory after adjusting for confounding variables, bringing into doubt the causal status of these effects. We apply the same approach to subjects' judgments of learning collected following an encoding period and show that these behavioral measures of mnemonic status do predict memory after adjustments, suggesting that it is possible to measure signals near the time of encoding that reflect causal mechanisms but that existing neuroimaging measures, at least in our data, may not have the precision and specificity to do so.
The present study examined the roles of word concreteness and word valence in the immediate serial recall task. Emotion words (e.g. happy) were used to investigate these effects. Participants completed study‐test trials with 7‐item study lists consisting of positive or negative words with either high or low concreteness (Experiments 1 and 2) and neutral (i.e. non‐emotion) words with either high or low concreteness (Experiment 2). In serial recall performance, we replicated the typical item concreteness effect (concrete words are better recalled than abstract words) and obtained an item valence effect (positive/neutral words are better recalled than negative words). However, there was no concreteness × valence interaction. We conclude that both word valence and word concreteness independently contribute to the serial order retention of emotion words in the immediate serial recall task.
Previous evidence shows that words with implicit spatial meaning or metaphorical spatial associations are perceptually simulated and can guide attention to associated locations (e.g., bird – upward location). In turn, simulated representations interfere with visual perception at an associated location. The present study investigates the effect of spatial associations on short-term verbal recognition memory to disambiguate between modal and amodal accounts of spatial interference effects across two experiments. Participants in both experiments encoded words presented in congruent and incongruent locations. Congruent and incongruent locations were based on an independent norming task. In Experiment 1, an auditorily presented word probed participants’ memory as they were visually cued to either the original location of the probe word or a diagonal location at retrieval. In Experiment 2, there was no cue at retrieval but a neutral encoding condition in which words normed to central locations were shown. Results show that spatial associations affected memory performance although spatial information was neither relevant nor necessary for successful retrieval: Words in Experiment 1 were retrieved more accurately when there was a visual cue in the congruent location at retrieval but only if they were encoded in a non-canonical position. A visual cue in the congruent location slowed down memory performance when retrieving highly imageable words. With no cue at retrieval (Experiment 2), participants were better at remembering spatially congruent words as opposed to neutral words. Results provide evidence in support of sensorimotor simulation in verbal memory and a perceptual competition account of spatial interference effect.
According to the item/order hypothesis, high-frequency words are processed more efficiently and therefore order information can be readily encoded. In contrast, low-frequency words are processed less efficiently and the focus on item-specific processing compromises order information. Most experiments testing this account use free recall, which has led to two problems: First, the role of order information is difficult to evaluate in free recall, and second, the data from free recall show all three possible patterns of results: memory for high-frequency words can be better than, the same as, or worse than that for low-frequency words. A series of experiments tested the item/order hypothesis using tests where the role of order information is less ambiguous. The item/order hypothesis predicts better performance for high- than low-frequency words when pure lists are used in both immediate serial recall (ISR) and serial reconstruction of order (SRO) tests. In contrast, when mixed (alternating) lists are used, it predicts better performance for low- than for high-frequency words with ISR tests, but equivalent performance with SRO tests. The experiments generally confirm these predictions, with the notable exception of a block order effect in SRO tasks: When a block of low-frequency lists preceded a block of high-frequency lists, a high-frequency advantage was observed but when a block of high-frequency lists preceded a block of low-frequency lists, no frequency effect was observed. A final experiment provides evidence that this block order effect is due to metacognitive factors.
Age of acquisition (AoA) refers to the age at which a person learns a word. Research has converged on the conclusion that early AoA words are processed more efficiently than late AoA words on a number of perceptual and reading tasks. However, only a few studies have investigated whether AoA affects memory on recognition, serial recall, and free recall tests, and the results are equivocal. We took advantage of the recent increase in the number of high-quality norms and databases to construct a pool of early and late AoA words that were equated on numerous other dimensions. There was a late AoA advantage in recognition using both pure (Experiment 1) and mixed (Experiment 2) lists, no effect of AoA on serial recall of either pure (Experiment 3) or mixed (Experiment 4) lists, and no effect of AoA on free recall of either pure (Experiment 5) or mixed lists (Experiment 6). We conclude that AoA does reliably affect memory on some memory tasks (recognition), but not others (serial recall, free recall), and that no current account of AoA can explain the findings.
For more than a half-century, lists of words have served as the memoranda of choice in studies of human memory. To better understand why some words and lists are easier to recall than others, we estimated multivariate models of word and list recall. In each of the 23 sessions, subjects (N = 98) studied and recalled the same set of 576 words, presented in 24 study-test lists. Fitting a statistical model to these data revealed positive effects of animacy, contextual diversity, valence, arousal, concreteness, and semantic structure on recall of individual words. We next asked whether a similar approach would allow us to account for list-level variability in recall performance. Here we hypothesized that semantically coherent lists would be most memorable. Consistent with this prediction, we found that semantic similarity, weighted by temporal distance, was a strong positive predictor of list-level recall. Additionally, we found significant effects of average contextual diversity, valence, animacy, and concreteness on list-level recall. Our findings extend previous models of item-level recall and show that aggregate measures of item recallability also account for variability in list-level performance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
Studies on the functions of the sign to date have been inadequate in that they leave unanswered a basic question of semiotics: What are the functions of a simple sign that consists essentially in the relation between two relata? The answer to this question is to be found in the phenomenon called “signize.” For intentional signs at least, all the mental entities can be signized, but only certain kinds of them have a strong signizing value. When these mental entities are signized, they tend to be signized into certain kinds of images. The advantages of these images over those mental entities give rise to certain benefits that, in turn, result in the basic functions of simple intentional signs. These basic functions are the starting point of a systematic study of the hierarchy of functions of intentional sign.
The picture-superiority effect (PSE) refers to the finding that, all else being equal, pictures are remembered better than words (Paivio & Csapo, 1973). Dual-coding theory (DCT; Paivio, 1991) is often used to explain the PSE. According to DCT, pictures are more likely to be encoded imaginally and verbally than words. In contrast, distinctiveness accounts attribute the PSE to pictures' greater distinctiveness compared to words. Some distinctiveness accounts emphasize physical distinctiveness (Mintzer & Snodgrass, 1999) while others emphasize conceptual distinctiveness (Hamilton & Geraci, 2006). We attempt to distinguish among these accounts by testing for an auditory analog of picture superiority. Although this phenomenon, termed the auditory PSE, occurs in free recall (Crutcher & Beer, 2011), we were unable to extend it to recognition across four experiments. We propose a new framework for understanding the PSE, wherein dual coding underpins the free-recall PSE, but conceptual distinctiveness underpins the recognition PSE.
“What happens if a jury misunderstands the judge’s instructions and finds a defendant guilty when it really meant to free him? Last week in Washington, D.C., Judge Joseph M. Hannon was confronted with this question— and had precious few precedents to draw on.
Across three experiments, we explore differences between relational categories—whose members share common relational patterns—and entity categories, whose members share common intrinsic properties. Specifically, we test the claim that relational concepts are more semantically mutable in context, and therefore less stable in memory, than entity concepts. We compared memory for entity nouns and relational nouns, tested either in the same context as at encoding or in a different context. We found that (1) participants show better recognition accuracy for entity nouns than for relational nouns and (2) recognition of relational nouns is more impaired by a change in context than is recognition of entity nouns. We replicated these findings even when controlling for factors highly correlated with relationality, such as abstractness-concreteness. This suggests that the contextual mutability of relational concepts is due to the core semantic property of conveying relational structure and not simply to accompanying characteristics such as abstractness. We note parallels with the distinction between nouns and verbs and suggest implications for lexical and conceptual structure. Finally, we relate these patterns to proposals that a deep distinction exists between words with an essentially referential function and those with a predicate function.
PQJE_1219752_supplemental_material.pdf
Research in the socio-emotional domain may require words for experimental settings rated on emotionally and socially relevant word characteristics (e.g., valence and desirability). In addition, cognitively relevant word characteristics (e.g., imagery) are important for research in the interface of emotion and cognition (e.g., emotional memory). To provide researchers with a corresponding word pool, the database of English EMOtional TErms (EMOTE) provides subjective ratings for 1287 nouns and 985 adjectives. Nouns and adjectives were rated on valence, arousal, emotionality, concreteness, imagery, familiarity, and clarity of meaning. In addition, adjectives were rated on control, desirability, and likeableness. EMOTE norms provide an easily accessible word pool for research in the socio-emotional domain. To illustrate the usefulness of this database, norms were linked to memorability scores from a word recognition task for EMOTE nouns. The database as well as future directions are discussed.
The standard finding of frequency effect is a high frequency advantage in recall and low frequency advantage in recognition. However, there are exception from these findings in from of a high frequency advantage of cues in recognition, an advantage for recognition of words over non-words, and a lack of frequency effects in mixed list of recall. A distributed connectionist memory model consisting of two mechanism sensitive to frequency is suggested. The error correcting learning rule controls encoding of items keeping the system from catastrophic interference with correlated patterns. This mechanism is found essential to simulate low frequency advantage in recognition. The familiarity is measured as the absolute net input. This mechanism accounts for the advantage of high frequency in recall, words over non-words in recognition, and high frequency cues. The model is implemented in a modified Hopfield network and analyzed analytically.
The original subject of studying the mental lexicon is the subjective representation of word meanings. Just as words are allocated their meanings in the lexicon in linguistics, words were allocated a mental representation in the psychology of the 1970’s. However, this position could not be maintained. Assumptions regarding representation have become increasingly differentiated, so that nowadays the mental lexicon must be understood as a part of the whole cognitive architecture.
Two experiments were carried out to investigate the claim that physical coding of rare words might be superior to their semantic coding. The results of Experiment 1 showed that physical coding is stronger than semantic coding for rare words. On the other hand, just the opposite result was obtained for common words: Semantic coding of common words was stronger than their physical coding. In Experiment 2, rare words embedded in semantic context were recognized better than in physical context. The result for common words was again opposite to that of rare words: They were recognized better in the physical context. These results quantitatively supported some interpretations in literature which claim that the physical coding of rare words might be superior to their semantic coding, The present results are also in accordance with the results of some investigations in which lexical decision and word fragment completion tasks were used.
A theoretical-experimental analysis of the attribute of meaning in verbal stimulus material. Like habit, meaning is a purely empirical construct. Meanings are postulated to increase as a simple linear function of the number of S-multiple R connections established in an organism's history. A word list of 96 dissyllables was presented to a sample of 119 USAF recruits. Defining meaning operationally in terms of mean frequency of written associations made within a 60-second time interval, a psychological performance scale of m-values is developed. The significance of the m-scale for research in verbal and perceptual-motor learning is discussed. 31 references.
Materials are presented which were developed for use in studies of verbal concept formation. The frequency of response tendencies by 153 elementary psychology students to 213 stimulus words (nouns) was determined. The responses were grouped into 40 categories. The elicitation by two or more words of the same responses indicates that the stimulus words can form the basis for concept formation tasks. The associations obtained were restricted since S was allowed to respond only in terms of sense impressions. The percentage of frequency of responses to each stimulus word is presented along with its category designations, percentages of miscellaneous responses are provided, and for each stimulus word is shown the Thorn-dike-Lorge frequency count per million words.