Comprehension of Abstract and Concrete Sentences.

Comprehension latencies of sentences varying in concreteness and meaningfulness were obtained under conditions of visual interference and verbal interference. Concrete sentences were consistently more rapidly comprehended than abstract sentences. There was a significant interaction between type of interference and sentence concreteness, in which the advantage of concrete over abstract sentences within the verbal interference condition was considerably reduced under the visual interference condition, particularly for anomalous sentences. Additionally, in a further experiment, there was a significant interaction between sentence concreteness and imagery ability, high imagers producing shorter comprehension latencies than low imagers, especially with abstract sentences. The results suggest that imaginal processes constitute an important element of comprehension.

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