On Arabic Abstract and Concrete Words Recall Using Free, Cued, and Serial Recall Paradigms: Is It Abstractness, Concreteness, or Zero Effect?

Ahmed Mohammed Saleh Alduais; Yasir Saad Almukhaizeem

Volume : V, Issue : XI, November - 2015

On Arabic Abstract and Concrete Words Recall Using Free, Cued, and Serial Recall Paradigms: Is It Abstractness, Concreteness, or Zero Effect?

Ahmed Mohammed Saleh Alduais, Yasir Saad Almukhaizeem

Abstract :

T Purpose: To see in which type of recall more words are recalled, to see whether abstract or concrete words are better recalled in each yet which type of recall, and to see if there are any differences between types of recall that would affect recall of abstract words over concrete ones or vice versa. Methods: Three groups of undergraduates in King Saud University, Saudi Arabia participated in this study where they were trained to differentiate between abstract and concrete words. A list of 20 Arabic abstract and concrete words was then given to them to be classified into abstract and concrete words based on four factors: concreteness, imageability, meaningfulness, and age of acquisition. An observation sheet was provided to the experiment administrator to document observed recall effects and recalled words. Three methods were used to facilitate this experiment: auditory, visual, and hand–writing methods. The students were asked to perform three types of recall: free recall for group 1, cued recall for group 2, and serial recall for group 3. Five of the participants were asked to recall freely and serially only 5 Arabic abstract words and 5 concrete and 4 were asked to to recall freely and serially the 20 Arabic abstract and concrete words. For cued recall, the whole group participants were required to recall the whole list. Results: Both referential and descriptive statistical tools were run to analyse the collected data and answer the questions of the current study. Run referential statistical tools approved the usability of the designed measures. Descriptive statistical tools revealed that the participants in the free recall group remembered all words in the 20 list, 10 list, abstract and concrete ones. In the cued recall group, they remembered the over majority of the words in the case of concrete ones but all the abstract ones. Again, for the serial recall group, they remembered only few words be it in the case of short list, long list, abstract or concrete with more remembered words in the case of abstract words. Zero effect was the most frequent effect among the three groups (free recall= 100, cued recall= 98.5 and serial recall= 82.3). Two effects were observed in free recall: (primacy effect: 35% and recency effect= 65%). For cued recall, two effects were observed also: (forward recall: 51% and backward recall: 49%). For serial recall, 9 effects were pre–specified and only 5 were observed: (transposition gradients effect= 100, primacy effect= 30, recency effect= 70, list length effect= over 17 and fill–in effect= over 16). Conclusions: Our results indicated that abstract and concrete words are better recalled in free recall paradigms than in cued and serial recall paradigms. Yet, words are more poorly and considerably recalled in serial recall than in both free and cued recall paradigms. There was also neither an advantage of concrete words over abstract ones nor for abstract words over concrete ones albeit insignificant statistical difference was calculated in the case of cued and serial recall paradigms in favour of abstractness effect. Finally, while recency effect is more frequent than primacy effect during free recall paradigms, both forward and backward recall effects are similar to one another in frequency level during cued recall paradigms. Transposition gradients effect is the most frequent observed effect during serial recall paradigms among the possible types of effects.