<p>Concrete concepts (<i>banana</i>) are processed faster and more accurately than abstract ones (<i>belief</i>). This phenomenon, supported by empirical studies, is known as the concreteness effect. However, recent research indicates that controlling certain psycholinguistic variables can mitigate or reverse this effect. We introduce a previously neglected variable, namely categorical specificity, and investigate its role in lexical and semantic access, through: ratings, a lexical decision task and a semantic decision task. Our findings confirm the processing advantage of concrete over abstract concepts (concreteness effect) and reveal a similar advantage for specific over general concepts (specificity effect). We also report a non-significant interaction between the two variables. We discuss the results within the general framework of conceptual abstraction.</p>