Two experiments studied the effects of concreteness and relatedness of noun pairs on free recall, cued recall, and memory integration. Dual-coding theory (DCT) implies that concreteness and relatedness should have independent and additive effects on memory performance, whereas relational-distinctiveness processing theory implies that the 2 variables should interact. Their effects proved to be statistically independent in cued-recall and memory integration tests in both studies. In free recall, the effects were independent in Experiment 1 and interactive over subjects, but not over items in Experiment 2. Results were most consistent with the DCT and, regarding integration, with the hypothesis that strong verbal relations are necessary for integrative recall of abstract pairs, whereas high imagery is sufficient for integrative recall of concrete pairs
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Paivio et al. (1994) studied this question.