Thesis
The influence of imagery and context on concrete and abstract word recall in neurotypical individuals
University of Iowa
Master of Arts (MA), University of Iowa
Spring 2023
DOI: 10.25820/etd.007090
Abstract
Background: Aphasia is an acquired language disorder; a common symptom of this disorder is difficulty in word recall. Abstract noun recall in people with aphasia is typically worse than concrete noun recall (Sandberg & Kiran, 2014). This phenomenon is called the concreteness effect. The concreteness of a noun refers to how well a person can access sensory information about a word (e.g. sight, sound). Different theories provide different explanations of the concreteness effect, but two factors that have been identified as influential are context and imagery. The relative roles of these factors in affecting concrete and abstract word recall are still unclear. To pave the way for future studies aiming to improve language treatments for people with aphasia (PwA), this study will examine how these factors affect word recall in neurotypical young adults.
Methods: Participants were 18- to 40-year-old native English speakers with no diagnosed language or memory impairments. Stimuli consisted of abstract and concrete nouns presented in four different conditions: with or without images, and with or without context. Participants were asked to recall and recognize these words later in the experiment. We analyzed recall accuracy, recognition accuracy, and latency with four three-way ANOVAs (2x2x2); the variables were concreteness (concrete vs abstract), modality (visual vs verbal), and context (contextualized vs non-contextualized).
Results: We found a consistent main effect of concreteness where concrete words had better accuracy and speed than abstract words. Visual stimuli were recalled more accurately than verbal stimuli. Context interacted with modality such that contextualized sentences had significantly worse outcomes than non-contextualized sentences whereas contextualized images had equal if not slightly better outcomes than non-contextualized images.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- The influence of imagery and context on concrete and abstract word recall in neurotypical individuals
- Creators
- Charlotte Hilker
- Contributors
- Jean K Gordon (Advisor)Si On Yoon (Committee Member)Stewart McCauley (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Thesis
- Degree Awarded
- Master of Arts (MA), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- Speech Pathology and Audiology
- Date degree season
- Spring 2023
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- DOI
- 10.25820/etd.007090
- Number of pages
- vii, 40 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2023 Charlotte Hilker
- Language
- English
- Date submitted
- 04/14/2023
- Date approved
- 04/18/2023
- Description illustrations
- illustrations, tables, graphs
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 33-36).
- Public Abstract (ETD)
- Aphasia is an acquired language disorder; a common symptom of this disorder is difficulty in word recall. Abstract noun recall in people with aphasia is typically worse than concrete noun recall. This phenomenon is called the concreteness effect. The more easily a person can access sensory information about a word (Can I see it? Can I touch it? Can I hear it?), the more concrete the word is. The research on this phenomenon suggests that two additional factors–context and imagery–play large roles in recall, although their exact impacts on concrete and abstract words remain unclear. To pave the way for future studies aiming to improve language treatments for people with aphasia (PwA), this study will examine how these factors affect word recall in neurotypical young adults. Participants were presented with abstract and concrete nouns on a computer. The words were presented in four different conditions: with or without images, and with or without context. Participants were asked to remember these words later in the experiment. We found that participants demonstrated better memory of concrete words than abstract words; and words presented with a picture were remembered better than words presented in a sentence. We found an interaction effect between whether or not we provided context and whether or not we provided an image, such that contextualized sentences had significantly worse outcomes than non-contextualized sentences whereas contextualized images had equal if not slightly better outcomes than non-contextualized images.
- Academic Unit
- Communication Sciences and Disorders
- Record Identifier
- 9984425199902771
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