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THE RECALL OF CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT SENTENCES AS A FUNCTION OF INTERPOLATED TASK
Author(s) -
DAVIES GRAHAM,
PROCTOR JOHN
Publication year - 1976
Publication title -
british journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.536
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8295
pISSN - 0007-1269
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8295.1976.tb01498.x
Subject(s) - psychology , sentence , recall , task (project management) , perception , cognitive psychology , recall test , coding (social sciences) , free recall , natural language processing , statistics , computer science , mathematics , management , neuroscience , economics
Begg & Paivio (1969) have proposed that while sentences dealing with abstract matters are normally coded in verbal terms, those concerned with concrete events are internalized as imagery. In two experiments, subjects observed both types of sentence prior to carrying out a distracter task which involved either verbal or perceptual coding. In agreement with the hypothesis, sentence type interacted significantly with interpolated task in both studies. Abstract sentence recall was significantly more impaired following the verbal task than the perceptual, while this effect was reversed for concrete sentences. In the second experiment, this latter difference also reached significance and, further, error analysis confirmed that the perceptual task influenced the semantic content of the sentences recalled. The results are discussed in terms of Begg & Paivio's hypothesis. Certain extensions and limitations of the theory are then considered.