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This research aimed to clarify the role of the perceptual richness of words (PR) in the recall tasks. PR was operationalized as the number of sensory modalities through which an object can be perceived. Previously, we found that concepts experienced with many modalities (dog) were recalled more accurately in cued recall than those perceived with few modalities (rainbow) and abstract words. This finding fitted the Perceptual symbol system theory (PSST) and the Dual coding theory (DCT) predictions. We tested the PR effect in both cued (experiment 1-E1) and free recall tasks (experiment 2 - E2) in the present study. With careful stimuli manipulation of context availability and emotional valence and statistical control of arousal and relatedness, made to exclude their influence on recall, we tested alternative explanations of the concreteness effect offered by the relational-distinctiveness hypothesis. The additional perceptual codes improved recall accuracy in the cued recall task (E1), which was in line with the PSST and the DCT. This conclusion is straightforward: two critical groups of concrete words were matched for concreteness and visual perceptual strength. Thus, more accurate recall of concepts experienced with many modalities can be attributed to richer perceptual experience. However, the relational information was essential for recall accuracy in the free recall task (E2), as hypothesized by the relational-distinctiveness hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research with the visual lexical decision task demonstrated that polysemous words (multiple related senses) have a processing advantage when compared to unambiguous words, whereas homonymous words (multiple unrelated meanings) have a processing disadvantage. Although the same pattern of results was observed in Serbian, the two effects were investigated in separate studies. The aim of this study was to test whether the effects can be replicated when both types of ambiguity are presented within the same experimental list. To test this, we conducted three experiments. In the first one, the mixed presentation of unambiguous, homonymous, and polysemous words did not reveal any of the ambiguity effects, leading to the conclusion that the experimental context may affect the emergence of ambiguity effects. The other two experiments were conducted to explicitly control for the experimental context. In both experiments, we presented each ambiguity type within the same block and counterbalanced the order of the block presentation. These experiments revealed the presence of the polysemy advantage, but not the homonymy disadvantage, which is a common pattern in literature. Polysemy effects typically emerge relatively easily, whereas the homonymy disadvantage requires additional conditions. Finally, we conclude that experimental context does play a role in ambiguity processing, although the order of presentation does not affect the overall results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research deals with the set of Serbian homonymous nouns (nouns with multiple unrelated meanings) presented in the norming study and in the visual lexical decision task experiment. Native speakers listed the meanings of homonymous words and provided word familiarity and word concreteness ratings. Accordingly, the first database of Serbian homonyms was constructed containing subjective meanings of homonymous nouns along with the estimated meaning probabilities, as well as a number of meanings, redundancy and entropy of the distribution of meaning probabilities, word familiarity and word concreteness. The processing disadvantage of homonymous nouns over unambiguous nouns was replicated in the visual lexical decision task. Additionally, the processing of homonymous nouns was linked with redundancy: the information theory measure of the balance of meaning probabilities. The results revealed that homonyms with higher redundancy of the meaning probability distribution (i.e., unbalanced meaning probabilities) were processed faster. This finding was in accordance with the hypothesis derived from the Semantic Settling Dynamics account of the processing of ambiguous words, according to which the competition among the unrelated meanings derived the processing disadvantage in homonymy. However, the same pattern was not observed for the number of meanings and entropy, inviting for further research of the processing of ambiguous words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this research was to establish whether and to what extent the stimulus context affected concreteness ratings. We hypothesized that concreteness ratings of concrete and abstract words would depend on concreteness range of the words that are presented to participants. We, therefore, presented three separate groups of participants with either a list of concrete nouns, a list of abstract nouns, or a joint list of both concrete and abstract nouns. All participants were given identical instructions and provided concreteness ratings on a seven-point scale. Our results revealed that while concrete nouns were always rated higher on the concreteness scale, the difference between average concreteness of concrete and abstract words was significantly higher when they were presented jointly compared to a situation when concrete and abstract words were rated separately. Additionally, we recorded the rating latencies. We found that participants were faster when rating words presented in a joint list of both concrete and abstract words, compared to rating either of them separately. Additionally, they were faster when rating concrete nouns compared to abstract nouns, with a tendency for this difference to be more pronounced in joint-list rating. Primarily, our results have practical implications for researchers who rely on large psycholinguistic databases to control for or match stimuli for concreteness, as we show that ratings collected in different norming studies might not be directly comparable. From a theoretical point of view, our results point to some differences between concrete and abstract words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this study was to test whether the accuracy of recall is influenced by the number of sensory modalities through which a concept can be experienced - a new variable closely related to word concreteness. Based on processing advantage of concepts that can be experienced through higher number of senses (fish) over the ones experienced through lower number of senses (moon), we hypothesized that the effect of number of senses will be observed in recall tasks, as well. In the first experiment, we presented pairs of related words to four groups of participants in the paired associate learning paradigm. Half of the participants were engaged in free recall, and half in cued recall. Each task was applied to two lists of stimuli. Within each list, half of the words were abstract, and half were concrete. Abstract words were identical across lists, whereas concrete words differed with respect to the number of modalities: one list consisted of concepts that can be experienced through a great number of senses, and another one contained those of a small number of sensory modalities. In addition to the traditional concreteness effect and that of the task, we observed the hypothesized effect of the number of sense modalities as well. As expected, participants were more accurate in cued recall task, more accurate when recalling concrete words, and more accurate when recalling concrete words with a large number of sensory modalities. The number of modalities effect was observed in the second experiment, where participants were presented with all three groups of words. To our best knowledge, this finding is the first demonstration of the effect of number of sensory modalities on memory processes. Finally, as expected, we observed that the concreteness effect was more pronounced in cued recall task. However, this interaction was not observed in the second experiment. Hence, we suggest further research of this phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]