Context and the Recallability of Concrete and Abstract Sentences

Three experiments were performed to examine the influence of contextual information on the recall of abstract and concrete sentences. In Experiment 1, concrete and abstract target sentences were presented in either a coherent paragraph context or a random paragraph context. In the random context, subjects recalled more concrete target sentences than abstract ones, but there was no difference between the two groups when the sentences were presented in a coherent context. Experiment 2 extended this finding by adding a moderately coherent context that used many of the same nouns as the coherent paragraph, but was not as thematically coherent. In addition to replicating the results of the first experiment, the moderately coherent context provided intermediate facilitation for the recall of abstract sentences relative to the random context and the coherent context, but context structure had no effect on the recall of concrete sentences. In Experiment 3, the target sentences were abstract and the concreteness of the context was varied. Abstract context sentences were recalled as well as concrete context sentences if the contexts formed a coherent paragraph. If the context was a randomly ordered list of sentences, however, then concrete context sentences were recalled better than abstract context sentences. The results were interpreted in terms of the differential availability of contextual information for abstract and concrete materials, and were taken as supporting the context availability model.