Abstract and Concrete Words: How Well Can They Be Remembered?
Abstract
This project investigates whether concrete or abstract words are better remembered. The responses of concrete words should be noticeably higher than that of the abstract words. This is because words that are concrete have more meaning to them, they can be visualised, therefore, are easier to remember than abstract words. This was completed by showing concrete and abstract words which were to be remembered, all shown in random order, on a screen. After all the words were shown, participants had to note which words they could remember. This was not made easy as there was a distracter task in between viewing the words and writing them down. The hypothesis was that concrete words are easier to recall than abstract words. It was learned that the hypothesis was correct.
Introduction
In everyday life, we may find that certain words are harder to remember than others. This could depend on many different variables. One variable could be the concreteness of a word. Research shown by Walker & Hulme (1999) stated that “concrete words will have more meaning-based features associated with them than abstract words”. For example, the words “cross” and “faith” are both related to religion, but the concrete word that is “cross” could be easier to remember in a word-remembering task than the abstract word which is “faith”.
The Term Paper on Term Memory Words Info Remember
Cognitive Psychology Week 1 - Lecture 1 Cognition - matching the world to internal representations - language and word recognition - pattern recognition - visual imagery - memory we will focus on memory - problems - when cognitive processes go wrong brain damage dyslexia amnesia - viral infections, car accidents, severe alcoholism, old age (alzeihemers) - they don't lose knowledge of the world, ...
There have been many researches which concluded that concrete words are better remembered than abstract words. In a research by Schwanenflugel & Stowe, (1989) it has been concluded in a word-naming task, that abstract words took longer to name than concrete words. This is because words which have direct sensory referents and from words which we can form a mental image are processed faster than abstract words as with abstract words, it is not possible to form mental imagery.
Paivio’s (Paivio, 1971, 1986) theory of dual-coding model could be an explanation to why the process of abstract words is slower. Concrete words have the superiority through memory of having two systems available, and abstract words only having one. The two systems available for concrete words is the availability of verbal system which consists of verbal associates, and an imagery system, which consists of images, therefore it is said that it has access to two systems. Whereas abstract words have the disadvantage of only having access to the verbal system alone, it cannot form mental images.
In this research the project looked at was very similar to the ones mentioned above. In this study, there was a list of individual words which were shown to participants; these were concrete and abstract words, randomly shown. After viewing them on the screen, participants were asked to recall them by writing them down. The words used in this experiment were taken from The Word List Generator, introduced by Paivio et al. The aim of this study was to investigate whether abstract or concrete words were better remembered. The experimental hypothesis was that the level of concreteness affects how easily a word is remembered; concrete words would have a higher response rate than abstract words. The results given from this study are expected not differ greatly from similar previous studies.
Method
Design: This is a within subjects design. In this experiment the dependent variable is the scores of the participants. The independent variable is abstractness of the words.
Participants: Twenty-three undergraduates from the University of Aberdeen participated in the study, and were all 2nd year Psychology students. The participants consisted of 7 males and 16 females. The mean age of participants was 20.6 years. The age range for participants was 18 – 28 years.
The Research paper on Case Study 38
Case Study (1) In chapter Balzar Wars of his book Paris to Moon, Adam Gopnik discuses the commercialization of restaurant business as such that has a negative affect the public image of Paris and France, as a whole. In 1998, the Balzar restaurant, which used to be owned by representatives of the same family since 1894, was being purchased by French restaurant tycoon Jean-Claude Bucher, for the ...
Materials: The words that were studied were shown on a screen. There were 40 words in total. The test items were 20 concrete words and 20 abstract words. All words were taken from the Word List Generator introduced by Paivio et al. (http://www.datavis.ca/online/paivio/).
The variables and the range of all the variables were all kept constant except the concreteness rating; the range for the concrete rate was changed to 1-3 and the range for the abstract words was changed to 4-7. Participants were given a sheet of paper on which they had to write down how many words they remembered. The participants were also given a number-related distracter task.
Procedure: Study phase: Participants were instructed to view the words that appear on the screen; they were told that the concreteness of the words remembered were measured; while they were told this they were not informed which the concrete were and which the abstract words were. Forty words were shown, each word appeared on the screen, individually, for 3 to 6 seconds, and these words were to be studied and tried to be kept in memory. Distracter: After completing viewing the list of words, the participants were given a game of Sudoku; this was given to avoid rehearsal of words which were exposed on the screen, the distracter task lasted for 2 to 3 minutes. Participants were then asked to write down as many words they could remember from the list.
Results:
|
| Mean | N | Std. Deviation | Std. Error Mean |
Pair 1 | concrete | 10.00 | 23 | 2.629 | .548 |
| abstract | 7.57 | 23 | 2.858 | .596 |
Table 1 Paired Samples Statistics
|
| Paired Differences | t | df | Sig. (2-tailed) |
| Mean | Std. Deviation | Std. Error Mean | 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference | | | |
| | | | Lower | Upper | | | |
Pair 1 | concrete – abstract | 2.435 | 2.626 | .547 | 1.299 | 3.570 | 4.447 | 22 | .000 |
Table 2 Paired Samples Test
From table 1, it can be seen that the mean score for concrete words was 10.0 and Std. Deviation = 2.6. The mean score for the abstract words was 7.6 and Std. Deviation = 2.9. A “Paired samples t test” had shown that this difference was statistically significant: t (22) = 4.45, p < .001.
The Essay on Abstract Word Words Participants Experiment
Method Participants There were 32 (22 female and 10 male) participants in this word recall experiment. Participants were of traditional and nontraditional college-age. The participants were from various academic majors; however, all participants were currently enrolled in one of three sections of an experimental psychology course. All of the experimental psychology students taking part in this ...
From the “Paired Samples Statistics” it can be seen that the mean score for concrete words is higher (mean = 10.0) than for the abstract words (mean = 7.6) which suggests that the concrete word responses were significantly higher than abstract words.
From Figure 1, it can be seen that the number of words remembered for the concrete words is higher than the number of words remembered for the abstract words; this was what was predicted in the hypotheses. The Bar Chart displays error bars.
Figure 1.
Bar chart displaying error bars
Discussion
The experimental hypothesis was that there would be a higher response rate of concrete words to abstract words. The results show this to be true; the mean number of concrete words is seen to be higher than the mean number of the abstract words, also showing that the test is statistically significant. Similar results were also seen in earlier experiments. (Walker & Hulme (1999), Schwanenflugel & Stowe, (1989)).
In relation to the study by Schwanenflugel and Stowe (1989), their study had shown that abstract words took longer to name than concrete words, in this study it was shown that abstract words were less remembered than concrete words. Paivio’s theory also comes into effect here; it is said that there are two systems available for concrete words and only one system for abstract; this can be seen in this study’s results too, as the mean number of abstract words recalled was less than the number of concrete words. This study is more evidence that the concreteness can depend on how well or how badly a word is remembered.
This can also be seen outside of the experiment area; writers will use abstract words to represent ideas, attitudes and causality and concrete words are used to support and illustrate the ideas.
Conclusion
From the investigation of this project, it can conclude that the concreteness of a word can affect how well it can be remembered; if it is a word that can be visualised and described easily, then the chances are that it will be remembered. If a word is too abstract and quite difficult to describe, it may not be as easy to recall.
The Essay on Abstracts Order Number
An increase in the statutory minimum wage rate would help the working poor up to an extent. However, if the minimum wage increases by too much, then more people will become unemployed because businesses will be unable or unwilling to hire people and pay them the higher minimum wage. Most economists agree that there is a “tipping point” where the wage becomes too high for businesses to pay. Some ...
Word Count: 1330
References
Walker, I., & Hulme, C. (1999).
Concrete words are easier to recall than abstract words: Evidence for a semantic contribution to short-term serial recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 25, 1256-1271.
Schwanenflugel, P. J., & Stowe, R. W. (winter, 1989).
Context Availability and the Processing of Abstract and Concrete Words in Sentences. Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 1 pp. 114-126.
Paivio et al. Word List Generator http://www.datavis.ca/online/paivio/
