Imagery and Meaningfulness in Free Recall: Word Attributes and Instructional Sets

Abstract

Summary Allan Paivio's dual-coding hypothesis of retention predicts that stimuli high in imagery value facilitate imaginal processing, while high meaningfulness stimuli facilitate verbal processing. When verbal and imaginal instructional sets have been used to test the predicted interactions, as mentioned above, the findings have almost always been negative, indicating a lack of support for a dual-process theory of coding in retention. In the present study it was hypothesized that instructional sets offer inadequate tests of dual or multiple-process theories because the proactive history of the verbal and imaginal semantic properties of the word lists determine coding in retention. That hypothesis was tested in two studies, one with children and one with adults. Verbal and imaginal attributes were varied in instructional sets and in word lists. As hypothesized, the interaction predicted by a dual-process theory of coding occurred in both studies (p < .0001). The interaction involved verbal and imaginal word attributes, but not the instructional sets. The findings are relevant to the testing of predictions from dual-process theories of retention and to reinterpretation of the results of earlier findings. In this study and in many related ones reviewed in the introduction, the “elusive” interaction predicted by a dual-process theory regularly does occur, and it seems to be determined by attributes of word lists.