Begg (1972) simultaneously supported both the additivity and conceptual peg
hypotheses using adjective-noun phrases that were either concrete and high in
imagery value (e. g., white horse) or abstract and low in imagery value (e. g.,
basic truth). Participants were asked to recall individual words from the phrases,
entire phrases, or one word from each phrase given the other as a cue. Begg
reasoned that concrete phrases would be integrated in memory by images (e. g.,
of a white horse) whereas abstract phrases would be recalled as separate words, so
that twice as many concrete words as abstract words would be remembered in free
recall, with a further increment for concrete words in cued recall because the
entire mediating image would be redintegrated by the cues. Begg’s free recall
results actually exceeded prediction in that recall of concrete phrases was more
than double that of abstract phrases, consistent with the image superiority
addendum to the code-additivity hypothesis. Moreover, in agreement with the
conceptual-peg hypothesis, recall was six times higher when cued by a concrete
word than by an abstract word.