Studies which have used experimental manipulations to increase concrete thinking have demonstrated concurrent increases in the concreteness of problem solving plans and autobiographical memory specificity (Watkins and Moulds 2005; Watkins and Teasdale 2001, 2004), and previous studies have reported a similar effect of a course of MBCT on the autobiographical memory (Williams et al. 2000).
Consistent with the idea of a broader increase in concreteness of thinking produced by MBCT increases in goal specificity and increases in autobiographical memory specificity were moderately correlated for the sample as a whole and for those allocated to MBCT.
The observed increased efficiency for concrete over abstract words is in accordance with the two dominant theoretical accounts used to explain effects of concreteness; dual coding theory [ 5] and context availability theory [ 17, 75] which both predict a processing advantage for concrete words.
We note that the current findings suggest that increases in sadness and reductions in happiness have equivalent effects on change in level of goal/ action identification, with both being positively correlated with increases in concreteness, in the non-depressed controls.
In this investigation, comprehensibility is seen as distinct from the abstract-concrete dimension, in which the comprehensibility of abstract items can be increased through the addition of contextual cues that do not necessarily increase the concreteness of the symbol.
To increase the likelihood of a stable and durable effect of concreteness training, the training involved repeated daily training over a week.
This study found that concreteness training was a more efficacious intervention than the other conditions, increasing our confidence that CNT may have a genuine therapeutic effect.
In Experiment 1, children with low prior knowledge received instruction in one of four conditions: (a) concrete, (b) abstract, (c) concreteness fading, or (d) concreteness introduction.
Recent research particularly stresses a sequence of fading from concrete into abstract (also called "concreteness fading," Goldstone and Son 2005).
They differ from concrete words and abstract words in concreteness, imageability, and context availability (Altarriba and Bauer 2004).
Based upon the MRC Psycholingusitic Database [59], the concrete, abstract, and ambiguous words had concreteness ratings of 605, 351, and 464, respectively.
