Challenging the dual coding theory : Does Affective Information Play a Greater Role in Abstract Compared to Concrete Word Processing?

Abstract: It has long been held that concrete material has a processing advantage over abstract material, as predicted by Dual Coding Theory (Paivio,1991), although this has been challenged. For example, based on evidence for behavioural and neuroscientific studies, Kousta,, Vigliocco, Vinson, & Del Campo, (2011) proposed that emotional valance had a greater influence in the processing of abstract words, and that under some circumstances there may be no concreteness effect and might even be an abstractness effect. This would not be predicted by DCT. In addition, Isen and Daubman (1984) have claimed that emotional valence, and particularly positive emotion can influence cognitive processing. Specifically, they demonstrated that positive emotion was associated with more inclusive categorization of ambiguous category members. This current study was a 2 x 2 between group design to investigate the effect of positive and negative valence on recognition memory for concrete and abstract words and on categorization. Contrary to what was predicted by Dual Coding Theory, abstract words were generally better recognized than concrete, with there being an additional interaction with valence. A significant interaction between word type and valence on categorization was also found. Results partially support Kousta et al. (2011).