Schwanenflugel, P. J., & Shoben, E. J. (1983). Differential context effects in the comprehension of abstract and concrete verbal materials. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 9(1), 82-102.

Schwanenflugel, P.; Shoben, E.

1983

Schwanenflugel, P. J., & Shoben, E. J. (1983). Differential context effects in the comprehension of abstract and concrete verbal materials. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 9(1), 82-102.

2

This study conducted 3 experiments to test contrasting predictions of a dual-representation theory and a context availability model of concreteness effects in verbal processing. In Exp I, abstract and concrete sentences with and without a paragraph context were presented to 67 undergraduates. Without context, Ss took longer to read abstract sentences than concrete sentences. With context, the reading times did not differ. A similar result was observed in Exp II with 41 Ss, in which lexical decision times were measured for abstract and concrete words. In the absence of context, lexical decision times for abstract words were longer than for concrete words. With a sentence context, however, the lexical decision times for these 2 word types were equivalent. A subsequent rating experiment, with 22 Ss, indicated that rated context availability was a good predictor of RT in both experiments. Results support the context availability model.

As in the previous experiment, we observed an interaction between concreteness and context. In the no-context condition, lexical decision time for abstract nouns was longer than that for concrete nouns. However, when presented in a sentence context, this difference disappeared. Thus, a similar effect was obtained for words as was found for sentences in experiment 1.

40

128