Concreteness and disagreement: Comment on Pollock (2018)
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Pollock (Behavior Research Methods doi:10.3758/s13428-017-0938-y, Pollock, 2018) points out that most memory experiments using abstract and concrete words have a potential confound: Raters express more disagreement, on average, about the rating for an abstract word than for a concrete word, as evidenced by the larger standard deviation of the rating (SDR). Therefore, past demonstrations of the concreteness effect could be explained by the disagreement hypothesis: Words that engender disagreement (i.e., have a larger SDR) are more difficult to remember than those that engender agreement (i.e., have a smaller SDR). Three experiments test predictions of the disagreement hypothesis. In Experiment 1, concreteness (abstract vs. concrete) and SDR size (small vs. large) were factorially manipulated. A concreteness effect was observed for both SDR sizes, but there was no effect of SDR and there were no interactions involving SDR. In Experiment 2, a concreteness effect was observed despite using abstract words with a small SDR and concrete words with a large SDR, the opposite of what the disagreement hypothesis predicts. Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 2 but with a larger set of stimuli. The results offer no support for the disagreement hypothesis.
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Neath and Surprenant (2020) showed that the effect of word concreteness was estimated as a consistent effect size when average Likert responses are used as the predictor, regardless of how large the SDs of Likert ratings are for the presented items.
“Neath and Suprenant showed, however, that the effect of word concreteness was estimated as a consistent effect size when average Likert responses are used as the predictor, regardless of how large the SDs of Likert ratings are for the presented items.”
From Rating norms should be calculated from cumulative link mixed effects models (2022) · cites this paper as Neath and Surprenant (2020)
The Results and discussion report a concreteness effect for both small- and large-SDR words and no significant word-type × SDR-size interaction, consistent with an effect that did not change with rating variability. But the study compared abstract and concrete word groups in a recall experiment; it did not estimate an effect size using average Likert responses as a predictor. (LLM, conf=0.86)
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Rating norms should be calculated from cumulative link mixed effects models
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- Authors
- Neath, I., & Surprenant, A. M.
- Affiliations
- Memorial University of Newfoundland (CA)
- Corresponding author
- Neath, Ian
- ORCID
- Surprenant, Aimée M.
- Venue
- Memory & Cognition
- Published
- 2020-01-06
- Volume
- 48
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 683-690
- ISSN
- 0090-502X (ISSN-L)
- 1532-5946
- OpenAlex
- W2999977105
- Cited by
- 10
- References
- 19
- Citations by year
- 2024: 1 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 2
- FWCI
- 1.21
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Memory & Cognition (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory Processes and Influences
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
- Keywords
- concreteness effect, abstract words, concrete words, rater disagreement, word memory, semantic memory
- MeSH terms
- Humans, Memory, Mental Recall, Semantics
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