Two faces of the conceptual peg hypothesis

Investigated why it is that the more concrete the subject noun phrase of a sentence, the more likely the predicate is to be recalled when the subject noun phrase is the cue. Ss were 77 undergraduates. Findings show that concreteness dramatically influenced both the probability of recognition of the subject noun phrase and the probability of recall of the predicate, given recognition. These results are taken to mean that a concrete phrase makes a good conceptual peg because it is likely to be given a specific, stable encoding and because it tends to reintegrate the whole sentence. Regression analysis showed that the concreteness effect could not be attributed to an influence on comprehensibility. A model of sentence memory is offered which can account for the results. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).