THE EFFECTS OF CONCRETENESS ON MEMORY - DUAL CODES OR DUAL PROCESSING

This research examined the relative importance of encoding and retriev al contexts to the demonstration of concreteness effects in memory. Pr edictions from relational-distinctive and dual-code positions were eva luated. In the first two experiments, concreteness and recall task (fr ee recall or cued recall) were manipulated following a relational sema ntic orienting task. The results showed an interaction between concret eness and recall type only when distinctive information could be acces sed both within and between pairs. The third experiment showed that co ncreteness effects appeared under a relational, non-semantic orienting task. In the fourth experiment, we reexamined the magnitude of the co ncreteness effect following semantic versus non-semantic tasks and rel ational versus item-specific processing. Overall, the findings were in consistent with both dual code theory and distinctive-relational view accounts of concreteness effects. An alternative ''bidirectionality hy pothesis'' is suggested.