Levy-Drori, S., & Henik, A. (2006). Concreteness and context availability in lexical decision tasks. American Journal of Psychology, 119(1), 45-65.

Levy-Drori, S.; Henik, A.

2006

Levy-Drori, S., & Henik, A. (2006). Concreteness and context availability in lexical decision tasks. American Journal of Psychology, 119(1), 45-65.

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Three experiments were carried out to elucidate the origins of the concreteness (C) effect in a lexical decision task. The first experiment was a replication of the work of Schwanenflugel et al. (1988) and Van Hell and De Groot (1998), who presented the context availability (CA) hypothesis. In this experiment CA seemed to be a dominant factor. Familiarity (FAM) was not incorporated in the ANOVA, but a regression analysis and negative correlation between C and FAM in the groups matched on CA showed that FAM could explain the disappearance of the C effect. Experiment 2 controlled FAM and revealed a C effect, although concrete and abstract words were matched on CA. Experiment 3 controlled C and FAM and revealed a CA effect. The current data emphasize the importance of controlling FAM and CA in examining the C effect in a lexical decision task and support a revised version of the dual-coding theory.

Experiment 2 examined the C effect while controlling for FAM and found a C effect despite the fact that concrete and abstract words were matched on CA. This result is not consistent with that for the fist set of words in experiment 1. This discrepancy is consistent with the idea that the patterns observed in experiment 1 are in large part a reflection of FAM.

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