Imaginal and verbal mediators and noun concreteness in paired-associate learning: The elusive interaction

Subjects were required to generate mediators for 30 concrete or 30 abstract noun pairs, in each case half the pairs being linked by nonverbal images and half by verbal mediators. The novel feature of the procedure was that the Ss explicitly produced the respective mediators by drawing the image and writing the phrase or sentence. A subsequent paired-associate (PA) recall test revealed an interaction such that imagery produced better recall than did verbal mediation in the case of concrete pairs whereas the reverse occurred with abstract pairs, as predicted from a two-process theory of meaning and mediation. Two further experiments confirmed these findings and supported the theory.