Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-tn8tq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-04T20:51:45.420Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The grammatical class effect is separable from the concreteness effect in language learning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 June 2019

Katherine I. Martin  and
Natasha Tokowicz
Katherine I. Martin*
Affiliation:
Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Natasha Tokowicz
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
*
Address for correspondence: Katherine I. Martin, E-mail: martinki@siu.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Typically concrete words are learned better than abstract words (Kaushanskaya & Rechtzigel, 2012), and nouns are learned better than verbs (Kauschke & Stenneken, 2008). However, most studies on concreteness have not manipulated grammatical class (and vice versa), leaving the relationship between the two unclear. Therefore, in two experiments we examined the effects of grammatical class and concreteness simultaneously in foreign language vocabulary learning. In Experiment 1, English speakers learned ‘foreign language’ words (English pseudowords) mapped to concrete and abstract nouns and verbs. In Experiment 2, English speakers learned German words with the same procedure. Overall, the typical advantages for concrete words and nouns were observed. Hierarchical regression analyses provided evidence that the grammatical class effect is separable from the concreteness effect. This result challenges a strict concreteness-based source of noun/verb differences. The results also suggest that the influences of concreteness and grammatical class may vary across language measures and tasks.

Keywords

concretenessgrammatical classvocabulary learning
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , May 2020 , pp. 554 - 569
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, R and Hulme, C (2006) Speech and language processing mechanisms in verbal serial recall. Journal of Memory and Language 55, 64–88. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2006.02.002CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Altarriba, J and Basnight-Brown, DM (2012) The acquisition of concrete, abstract, and emotion words in a second language. International Journal of Bilingualism 16, 446–452. doi:10.1177/1367006911429511CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Azuma, T and Van Orden, GC (1997) Why SAFE is better than FAST: The relatedness of a word's meanings affects lexical decision times. Journal of Memory and Language 36, 484–504. doi:https://doi.org/10.1006/jmla.1997.2502CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baayen, RH, Davidson, DJ and Bates, DM (2008) Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language 59, 390–412. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2007.12.005CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baayen, RH and Milin, P (2010) Analyzing reaction times. International Journal of Psychological Research 3, 12–28. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.21500/20112084.807CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baayen, RH, Piepenbrock, R and Gulikers, L (1995) The CELEX Lexical Database. Release 2 (CD-ROM): Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Balota, DA, Yap, MJ, Cortese, MJ, Hutchison, KA, Kessler, B, Loftis, B, Neely, JH, Nelson, DL, Simpson, GB and Treiman, R (2007) The English Lexicon Project. Behavior Research Methods 39, 445–459.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barber, HA, Kousta, S-T, Otten, LJ and Vigliocco, G (2010) Event-related potentials to event-related words: Grammatical class and semantic attributes in the representation of knowledge. Brain Research 1332, 65–74. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2010.03.014CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Basnight-Brown, DM and Altarriba, J (2016) Multiple translations in bilingual memory: Processing differences across concrete, abstract, and emotion words. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 45, 1219–1245. doi:10.1007/s10936-015-9400-4CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bates, D, Maechler, M, Bolker, B and Walker, S (2014) lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using Eigen and S4 (Version R package version 1.1-11): http://cran.r-project.org/package=lme4.Google Scholar
Bedny, M and Thompson-Schill, SL (2006) Neuroanatomically separable effects of imageability and grammatical class during single-word comprehension. Brain and Language 98, 127–139. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2006.04.008CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berndt, RS, Haendiges, AN, Burton, MW and Mitchum, CC (2002) Grammatical class and imageability in aphasic word production: Their effects are independent. Journal of Neurolinguistics 15, 353–371. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0911-6044(01)00030-6CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berndt, RS, Mitchum, CC, Haendiges, AN and Sandson, J (1997) Verb retrieval in aphasia. 1. Characterizing single word impairments. Brain and Language 56, 68–106. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/brln.1997.1727CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Birch, BM (2015) English L2 reading: Getting to the bottom. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bird, H, Franklin, S and Howard, D (2001) Age of acquisition and imageability ratings for a large set of words, including verbs and function words. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments & Computers 33, 73–79.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bird, H, Howard, D and Franklin, S (2000) Why is a verb like an inanimate object? Grammatical category and semantic category deficits. Brain and Language 72, 246–309. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/brln.2000.2292CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Black, M and Chiat, S (2003) Noun–verb dissociations: A multi-faceted phenomenon. Journal of Neurolinguistics 16, 231–250. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0911-6044(02)00017-9CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boada, R, Sánchez-Casas, R, Gavilán, JM, García-Albea, JE and Tokowicz, N (2012) Effect of multiple translations and cognate status on translation recognition performance of balanced bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 16, 183–197. doi:10.1017/S1366728912000223CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bogka, N, Masterson, J, Druks, J, Fragkioudaki, M, Chatziprokopiou, E-S and Economou, K (2003) Object and action picture naming in English and Greek. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology 15, 371–403. doi:10.1080/09541440303607CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bornstein, MH, Cote, LR, Maital, S, Painter, K, Park, S-Y, Pascual, L, Pêcheux, MG, Ruel, J, Venuti, P and Vyt, A (2004) Cross-linguistic analysis of vocabulary in young children: Spanish, Dutch, French, Hebrew, Italian, Korean, and American English. Child Development 75, 1115–1139. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2004.00729.xCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Borowsky, R and Masson, MEJ (1996) Semantic ambiguity effects in word identification. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition 22, 63–85.Google Scholar
Bourassa, DC and Besner, D (1994) Beyond the articulatory loop: A semantic contribution to serial order recall of subspan lists. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 1, 122–125. doi:10.3758/bf03200768CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Breedin, SD (1996) Patterns of verb impairment in aphasia: An analysis of four cases. Cognitive Neuropsychology 13, 51–92. doi:10.1080/026432996382060CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Breedin, SD, Saffran, EM and Coslett, HB (1994) Reversal of the concreteness effect in a patient with semantic dementia. Cognitive Neuropsychology 11, 617–660. doi:10.1080/02643299408251987CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chiarello, C, Liu, S, Shears, C and Kacinik, N (2002) Differential asymmetries for recognizing nouns and verbs: Where are they? Neuropsychology 16, 35–48. doi:10.1037/0894-4105.16.1.35CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Childers, JB and Tomasello, M (2002) Two-year-olds learn novel nouns, verbs, and conventional actions from massed or distributed exposures. Developmental Psychology 38, 967–978.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cohen, J, Cohen, P, West, SG and Aiken, LS (2003) Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Comesaña, M, Perea, M, Piñeiro, A and Fraga, I (2009) Vocabulary teaching strategies and conceptual representations of words in L2 in children: Evidence with novice learners. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 104, 22–33. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2008.10.004CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crepaldi, D, Berlingeri, M, Paulesu, E and Luzzatti, C (2011) A place for nouns and a place for verbs? A critical review of neurocognitive data on grammatical-class effects. Brain and Language 116, 33–49. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2010.09.005CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crutch, SJ (2006) Qualitatively different semantic representations for abstract and concrete words: Further evidence from the semantic reading errors of deep dyslexic patients. Neurocase 12, 91–97. doi:10.1080/13554790500507172CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crutch, SJ, Connell, S and Warrington, EK (2009) The different representational frameworks underpinning abstract and concrete knowledge: Evidence from odd-one-out judgements. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 62, 1377–1390. doi:10.1080/17470210802483834CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crutch, SJ and Jackson, EC (2011) Contrasting graded effects of semantic similarity and association across the concreteness spectrum. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 64, 1388–1408. doi:10.1080/17470218.2010.543285CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crutch, SJ, Ridha, BH and Warrington, EK (2006) The different frameworks underlying abstract and concrete knowledge: Evidence from a bilingual patient with a semantic refractory access dysphasia. Neurocase 12, 151–163. doi:10.1080/13554790600598832CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crutch, SJ and Warrington, EK (2005) Abstract and concrete concepts have structurally different representational frameworks. Brain 128, 615–627. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/brain/awh349CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crutch, SJ and Warrington, EK (2007) Semantic priming in deep-phonological dyslexia: Contrasting effects of association and similarity upon abstract and concrete word reading. Cognitive Neuropsychology 24, 583–602. doi:10.1080/02643290701577351CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Davis, MH, Di Betta, AM, Macdonald, MJE and Gaskell, MG (2009) Learning and consolidation of novel spoken words. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 21, 803–820. doi:10.1162/jocn.2009.21059CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
de Groot, AMB (2006) Effects of stimulus characteristics and background music on foreign language vocabulary learning and forgetting. Language Learning 56, 463–506. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9922.2006.00374.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Groot, AMB (2011) Language and cognition in bilinguals and multilinguals: An introduction. New York, NY: Psychology Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Groot, AMB and Keijzer, R (2000) What is hard to learn is easy to forget: The roles of word concreteness, cognate status, and word frequency in foreign-language vocabulary learning and forgetting. Language Learning 50, 1–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Groot, AMB and Poot, R (1997) Word translation at three levels of proficiency in a second language: The ubiquitous involvement of conceptual memory. Language Learning 47, 215–264. doi:10.1111/0023-8333.71997007CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drake, DA and Ehri, LC (1984) Spelling acquisition: Effects of pronouncing words on memory for their spellings. Cognition and Instruction 1, 297–320. doi:10.1207/s1532690xci0103_2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Druks, J (2002) Verbs and nouns—a review of the literature. Journal of Neurolinguistics 15, 289–315. doi:10.1016/s0911-6044(01)00029-xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Druks, J, Masterson, J, Kopelman, M, Clare, L, Rose, A and Rai, G (2006) Is action naming better preserved (than object naming) in Alzheimer's disease and why should we ask? Brain and Language 98, 332–340. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2006.06.003CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dye, CD, Walenski, M, Prado, EL, Mostofsky, S and Ullman, MT (2013) Children's computation of complex linguistic forms: A study of frequency and imageability effects. PLoS ONE 8, e74683. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0074683CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Earles, JL and Kersten, AW (2016) Why are verbs so hard to remember? Effects of semantic context on memory for verbs and nouns. Cognitive Science 41, 780–807. doi:10.1111/cogs.12374CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ehri, LC (1984) How orthography alters spoken language competencies in children learning to read and spell. In Downing, J & Valtin, R (eds), Language awareness and learning to read. New York, NY: Springer New York, pp. 119–147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ehri, LC (2014) Orthographic mapping in the acquisition of sight word reading, spelling memory, and vocabulary learning. Scientific Studies of Reading 18, 5–21. doi:10.1080/10888438.2013.819356CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Everson, ME (1998) Word recognition among learners of Chinese as a foreign language: Investigating the relationship between naming and knowing. The Modern Language Journal 82, 194–204. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4781.1998.tb01192.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eviatar, Z, Menn, L and Zaidel, E (1990) Concreteness: Nouns, verbs, and hemispheres. Cortex 26, 611–624. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-9452(13)80310-3CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ferré, P, Guasch, M, García-Chico, T and Sánchez-Casas, R (2015) Are there qualitative differences in the representation of abstract and concrete words? Within-language and cross-language evidence from the semantic priming paradigm. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 68, 2402–2418. doi:10.1080/17470218.2015.1016980CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ferré, P, Sánchez-Casas, R, Comesaña, M and Demestre, J (2017) Masked translation priming with cognates and noncognates: Is there an effect of words’ concreteness? Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 20, 770–782. doi:10.1017/S1366728916000262CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferré, P, Ventura, D, Comesaña, M and Fraga, I (2015) The role of emotionality in the acquisition of new concrete and abstract words. Frontiers in Psychology 6, 976. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00976CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gathercole, SE, Pickering, SJ, Hall, M and Peaker, SM (2001) Dissociable lexical and phonological influences on serial recognition and serial recall. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology A: Human Experimental Psychology 54, 1–30.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Geng, J and Schnur, TT (2015) The representation of concrete and abstract concepts: Categorical versus associative relationships. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 41, 22–41. doi:10.1037/a0037430Google ScholarPubMed
Gentner, D (1981) Some interesting differences between verbs and nouns. Cognition and Brain Theory 4, 161–178.Google Scholar
Gentner, D (1982) Why nouns are learned before verbs: Linguistical relativity versus natural partitioning. In Kuczaj, S. A. II (ed), Language development: Vol 2. Language, thought, and culture. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum pp. 301–334.Google Scholar
Gentner, D (2006) Why verbs are hard to learn. In Hirsh-Pasek, K & Golinkoff, RM (eds), Action meets word: How children learn verbs. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, pp. 544–564.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gentner, D and Boroditsky, L (2001) On individuation, relativity, and early word learning. In Bowerman, M & Levinson, S (eds), Language acquisition and conceptual development. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 257–283.Google Scholar
Hanley, JR, Hunt, RP, Steed, DA and Jackman, S (2013) Concreteness and word production. Memory & Cognition 41, 365–377. doi:10.3758/s13421-012-0266-5CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Haro, J and Ferré, P (2018) Semantic ambiguity: Do multiple meanings inhibit or facilitate word recognition? Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 47, 679–698. doi:10.1007/s10936-017-9554-3CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Holcomb, PJ, Kounios, J, Anderson, JE and West, WC (1999) Dual-coding, context-availability, and concreteness effects in sentence comprehension: An electrophysiological investigation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition 25, 721–742.Google ScholarPubMed
Howard, D and Gatehouse, C (2006) Distinguishing semantic and lexical word retrieval deficits in people with aphasia. Aphasiology 20, 921–950. doi:10.1080/02687030600782679CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Imai, M, Haryu, E and Okada, H (2005) Mapping novel nouns and verbs onto dynamic action events: Are verb meanings easier to learn than noun meanings for Japanese children? Child Development 76, 340–355. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2005.00849_a.xCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Imai, M, Li, L, Haryu, E, Okada, H, Hirsh-Pasek, K, Golinkoff, RM and Shigematsu, J (2008) Novel noun and verb learning in Chinese-, English-, and Japanese-speaking children. Child Development 79, 979–1000. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2008.01171.xCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
James, CT (1975) The role of semantic information in lexical decisions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 1, 130–136. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.1.2.130Google Scholar
Johnston, RA and Barry, C (2006) Age of acquisition and lexical processing. Visual Cognition 13, 789–845. doi:10.1080/13506280544000066CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kambanaros, M (2009) Investigating grammatical word class distinction in bilingual aphasic individuals. In Ibanescu, G & Pescariu, S (eds), Aphasia: Symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers, pp. 1–59.Google Scholar
Kambanaros, M and Grohmann, KK (2010) Patterns of object and action naming in Cypriot Greek children with SLI and WFDs. Proceedings of the 34th Boston University Child Language Development—Supplement.Google Scholar
Kambanaros, M and Grohmann, KK (2015) Grammatical class effects across impaired child and adult populations. Frontiers in Psychology 6, 1670. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01670CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kambanaros, M, Grohmann, KK and Michaelides, M (2013) Lexical retrieval for nouns and verbs in typically developing bilectal children. First Language 33, 182–199. doi:10.1177/0142723713479435CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kambanaros, M, Grohmann, KK, Michaelides, M and Theodorou, E (2014) On the nature of verb–noun dissociations in bilectal SLI: A psycholinguistic perspective from Greek. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 17, 169–188. doi:10.1017/S1366728913000035CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kambanaros, M and van Steenbrugge, W (2006) Noun and verb processing in Greek–English bilingual individuals with anomic aphasia and the effect of instrumentality and verb–noun name relation. Brain and Language 97, 162–177. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2005.10.001CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Karpicke, JD and Roediger, HL (2007) Repeated retrieval during learning is the key to long-term retention. Journal of Memory and Language 57, 151–162. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2006.09.004CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kauschke, C and Stenneken, P (2008) Differences in noun and verb processing in lexical decision cannot be attributed to word form and morphological complexity alone. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 37, 443–452. doi:10.1007/s10936-008-9073-3CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kaushanskaya, M and Marian, V (2009) The bilingual advantage in novel word learning. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 16, 705–710. doi:10.3758/pbr.16.4.705CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kaushanskaya, M and Rechtzigel, K (2012) Concreteness effects in bilingual and monolingual word learning. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 19, 935–941. doi:10.3758/s13423-012-0271-5CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Laxén, J and Lavaur, J-M (2009) The role of semantics in translation recognition: Effects of number of translations, dominance of translations and semantic relatedness of multiple translations. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 13, 157–183. doi:10.1017/S1366728909990472CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, C-L and Federmeier, KD (2008) To watch, to see, and to differ: An event-related potential study of concreteness effects as a function of word class and lexical ambiguity. Brain and Language 104, 145–158. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2007.06.002CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Levelt, WJM (1989) Speaking. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Levelt, WJM, Roelofs, A and Meyer, AS (1999) A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22, 1–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Li, P and Farkaš, I (2002) A self-organizing connectionist model of bilingual processing. In Heredia, RR & Altarriba, J (eds), Bilingual Sentence Processing. North Holland: Elsevier Science Publisher, pp. 59–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, P, Farkaš, I and MacWhinney, B (2004) Early lexical development in a self-organizing neural network. Neural Networks 17, 1345–1362. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neunet.2004.07.004CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Longe, O, Randall, B, Stamatakis, EA and Tyler, LK (2007) Grammatical categories in the brain: The role of morphological structure. Cerebral Cortex 17, 1812–1820. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhl099CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ma, W, Golinkoff, RM, Hirsh-Pasek, K, McDonough, C and Tardif, T (2009) Imageability predicts the age of acquisition of verbs in Chinese children. Journal of Child Language 36, 405–423. doi:10.1017/S0305000908009008CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Maguire, MJ, Hirsh-Pasek, K and Golinkoff, RM (2006) A unified theory of word learning: Putting verb acquisition in context. In Hirsh-Pasek, K & Golinkoff, RM (eds), Action meets word: How children learn verbs. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, pp. 364–391.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marian, V, Bartolotti, J, Chabal, S and Shook, A (2012) CLEARPOND: Cross-Linguistic Easy-Access Resource for Phonological and Orthographic Neighborhood Densities. PLoS ONE 7, e43230. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0043230CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Masson, MEJ (2011) A tutorial on a practical Bayesian alternative to null-hypothesis significance testing. Behavior Research Methods 43, 679–690. doi:10.3758/s13428-010-0049-5CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mätzig, S, Druks, J, Masterson, J and Vigliocco, G (2009) Noun and verb differences in picture naming: Past studies and new evidence. Cortex 45, 738–758. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2008.10.003CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McCarthy, D (2006) Relating WordNet senses for word sense disambiguation. Proceedings of the Workshop on Making Sense of Sense: Bringing Psycholinguistics and Computational Linguistics Together (pp. 17–24). Retrieved from http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W06-2503.Google Scholar
McDonough, C, Song, L, Hirsh-Pasek, K, Golinkoff, RM and Lannon, R (2011) An image is worth a thousand words: Why nouns tend to dominate verbs in early word learning. Developmental Science 14, 181–189. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2010.00968.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mestres-Missé, A, Münte, TF and Rodriguez-Fornells, A (2014) Mapping concrete and abstract meanings to new words using verbal contexts. Second Language Research 30, 191–223. doi:10.1177/0267658313512668CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paivio, A (1971) Imagery and verbal process. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.Google Scholar
Paivio, A (1986) Mental representations: A dual coding approach. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Paivio, A (2006) Mind and its evolution: A dual coding theoretical account. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Paivio, A, Yuille, JC and Madigan, SA (1968) Concreteness, imagery, and meaningfulness values for 925 nouns. Journal of Experimental Psychology 76(1, Pt.2), 1–25. doi:10.1037/h0025327CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Palmer, SD, MacGregor, LJ and Havelka, J (2013) Concreteness effects in single-meaning, multi-meaning and newly acquired words. Brain Research 1538, 135–150. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2013.09.015;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Papagno, C, Capasso, R and Miceli, G (2009) Reversed concreteness effect for nouns in a subject with semantic dementia. Neuropsychologia 47, 1138–1148. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.01.019CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Papagno, C and Vallar, G (1995) Verbal short-term memory and vocabulary learning in polyglots. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A 48, 98–107. doi:10.1080/14640749508401378CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Perfetti, CA (2007) Reading ability: Lexical quality to comprehension. Scientific Studies of Reading 11, 357–383. doi:10.1080/10888430701530730CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perfetti, CA and Hart, L (2001) The lexical basis of comprehension skill. In Gorfein, DS (ed.), On the consequences of meaning selection: Perspectives on resolving lexical ambiguity. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, pp. 67–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piercey, CD and Joordens, S (2000) Turning an advantage into a disadvantage: Ambiguity effects in lexical decision versus reading tasks. Memory & Cognition 28, 657–666. doi:10.3758/bf03201255CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Plaut, DC and Shallice, T (1993) Deep dyslexia: A case study of connectionist neuropsychology. Cognitive Neuropsychology 10, 377–500. doi:10.1080/02643299308253469CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prado, EL and Ullman, MT (2009) Can imageability help us draw the line between storage and composition? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 35, 849–866. doi:10.1037/a0015286Google ScholarPubMed
Princeton. (2010) About WordNet. Retrieved from https://wordnet.princeton.eduGoogle Scholar
PST. E-Prime 2.0. Pittsburgh, PA: Psychology Software Tools.Google Scholar
Raftery, AE (1995) Bayesian model selection in social research. Sociological Methodology 25, 111–163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodd, JM, Berriman, R, Landau, M, Lee, T, Ho, C, Gaskell, MG and Davis, MH (2012) Learning new meanings for old words: Effects of semantic relatedness. Memory & Cognition 40, 1095–1108. doi:10.3758/s13421-012-0209-1CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rodd, JM, Gaskell, G and Marslen-Wilson, W (2002) Making sense of semantic ambiguity: Semantic competition in lexical access. Journal of Memory and Language 46, 245–266.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roediger, HL and Butler, AC (2011) The critical role of retrieval practice in long-term retention. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 15, 20–27. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2010.09.003CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Romani, C, McAlpine, S and Martin, RC (2008) Concreteness effects in different tasks: Implications for models of short-term memory. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 61, 292–323.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rosenthal, J and Ehri, LC (2011) Pronouncing new words aloud during the silent reading of text enhances fifth graders’ memory for vocabulary words and their spellings. Reading and Writing 24, 921–950. doi:10.1007/s11145-010-9239-xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sandberg, C and Kiran, S (2014) Analysis of abstract and concrete word processing in persons with aphasia and age-matched neurologically healthy adults using fMRI. Neurocase 20, 361–388. doi:10.1080/13554794.2013.770881CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schwanenflugel, PJ, Harnishfeger, KK and Stowe, RW (1988) Context availability and lexical decisions for abstract and concrete words. Journal of Memory and Language 27, 499–520. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0749-596X(88)90022-8CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwanenflugel, PJ and Shoben, EJ (1983) Differential context effects in the comprehension of abstract and concrete verbal materials. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 9, 82–102. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.9.1.82Google Scholar
Schwanenflugel, PJ and Stowe, RW (1989) Context availability and the processing of abstract and concrete words in sentences. Reading Research Quarterly 24, 114–126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sheng, L and McGregor, KK (2010) Object and action naming in children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 53, 1704–1719. doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2010/09-0180)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Szekely, A, D'Amico, S, Devescovi, A, Federmeier, K, Herron, D, Iyer, G, Jacobsen, T and Bates, E (2005) Timed action and object naming. Cortex 41, 7–25. doi:10.1016/s0010-9452(08)70174-6CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tokowicz, N and Kroll, JF (2007) Number of meanings and concreteness: Consequences of ambiguity within and across languages. Language and Cognitive Processes 22, 727–779.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tokowicz, N, Michael, EB and Kroll, JF (2004) The roles of study-abroad experience and working-memory capacity in the types of errors made during translation. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 7, 255–272. doi:10.1017/S1366728904001634CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tolentino, LC and Tokowicz, N (2009) Are pumpkins better than heaven? An ERP investigation of order effects in the concrete-word advantage. Brain and Language 110, 12–22.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
van Hell, JG and Candia Mahn, A (1997) Keyword mnemonics versus rote rehearsal: Learning concrete and abstract foreign words by experienced and inexperienced learners. Language Learning 47, 507–546. doi:10.1111/0023-8333.00018CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Hell, JG and de Groot, AMB (1998a) Conceptual representation in bilingual memory: Effects of concreteness and cognate status in word association. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 1, 193–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Hell, JG and de Groot, AMB (1998b) Disentangling context availability and concreteness in lexical decision and word translation. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology A: Human Experimental Psychology 51A, 41–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Orden, GC (1987) A ROWS is a ROSE: Spelling, sound, and reading. Memory & Cognition 15, 181–198. doi:10.3758/bf03197716CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vigliocco, G, Vinson, DP, Druks, J, Barber, H and Cappa, SF (2011) Nouns and verbs in the brain: A review of behavioural, electrophysiological, neuropsychological and imaging studies. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 35, 407–426. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2010.04.007CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wagenmakers, E-J (2007) A practical solution to the pervasive problems of p values. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 14, 779–804. doi:10.3758/bf03194105CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Walker, I and 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, and Cognition 25, 1256–1271.Google Scholar
Wang, J, Conder, JA, Blitzer, DN and Shinkareva, SV (2010) Neural representation of abstract and concrete concepts: A meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies. Human Brain Mapping 31, 1459–1468. doi:10.1002/hbm.20950CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Waxman, S, Fu, X, Arunachalam, S, Leddon, E, Geraghty, K and Song, H-J. (2013) Are nouns learned before verbs? Infants provide insight into a long-standing debate. Child Development Perspectives 7, 155–159. doi:10.1111/cdep.12032CrossRefGoogle Scholar
West, WC and Holcomb, PJ (2000) Imaginal, semantic, and surface-level processing of concrete and abstract words: An electrophysiological investigation. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 12, 1024–1037.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, MD (1988) The MRC psycholinguistic database: Machine readable dictionary, Version 2. Behavior Research Methods 20, 6–11.Google Scholar
Xu, X, Kang, C and Guo, T (2016) Imageability and semantic association in the representation and processing of event verbs. Cognitive Processing 17, 175–184. doi:10.1007/s10339-015-0747-0CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zhang, Q, Guo, C-Y, Ding, J-H, & Wang, Z-Y (2006) Concreteness effects in the processing of Chinese words. Brain and Language 96, 59–68. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2005.04.004CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zhang, X, Han, Z and Bi, Y (2013) Are abstract and concrete concepts organized differently? Evidence from the blocked translation paradigm. Applied Psycholinguistics 34, 1059–1092. doi:10.1017/S0142716412000124CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Martin and Tokowicz supplementary material

Martin and Tokowicz supplementary material 1

Download Martin and Tokowicz supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 147.3 KB