Abstract
Subjects were presented with pictures, concrete nouns, or abstract nouns for a single learning trial followed by three forced recall trials. Performance was found to improve with repeated recall for pictures (hypermnesic effect) but not for words. Memory of pictures was superior to recall of concrete nouns, which in turn was superior to recall of abstract nouns. The results are interpreted as supporting an hypothesis that qualitative differences in imagery, and not the dual encoding theory, account for the picture superiority effect. The dual encoding theory, however, can and does predict differences in word abstractness/concreteness recall.
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Csapo, K. G. Stimulus attributes, presentation rate, and coding in short-term memory. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada, 197
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This research was supported by a grant from the National Research Council of Canada (A0288). The manuscript was written while the author was a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Tennessee. I wish to thank George R. Andreoff for his help in gathering the data and analysis of the results.
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Yarmey, A.D. Hypermnesia for pictures but not for concrete or abstract words. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 8, 115–117 (1976). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03335098
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03335098