Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, San Sebastián, Spain.
Psychol Sci. 2012 Apr;23(4):364-9. doi: 10.1177/0956797611430691. Epub 2012 Feb 28.
That similar words can prime one another is not news. However, this phenomenon can be exploited to make inferences about the organization of conceptual representations. What types of similarity matter? Although there is evidence that similarity of function, shape, and even manner of manipulation is reflected in semantic memory, evidence for organization on the basis of color similarity is sparse. This lack of evidence is surprising: Intuition suggests that color is a prominent feature of many object concepts. The research reported here clarifies this puzzle and illustrates the dynamic nature of conceptual representations. Our research demonstrates color-based priming (e.g., "emerald" primes "cucumber") in participants who completed a Stroop color-naming task before a priming task. Notably, the size of the Stroop effect predicted the size of the priming effect. When the order of tasks was reversed, priming effects were eliminated. By demonstrating that both extrinsic and intrinsic factors can influence conceptual activation, our findings have implications for theories of semantic memory.
相似的词可以相互激活，这并不是什么新闻。然而，这种现象可以被用来推断概念表示的组织方式。哪些类型的相似性很重要？尽管有证据表明功能、形状甚至操作方式的相似性反映在语义记忆中，但基于颜色相似性的组织证据却很少。这种缺乏证据令人惊讶：直觉表明，颜色是许多物体概念的突出特征。这里报告的研究澄清了这个谜团，并说明了概念表示的动态性质。我们的研究表明，在完成启动任务之前完成斯特鲁普颜色命名任务的参与者中存在基于颜色的启动（例如，“祖母绿”启动“黄瓜”）。值得注意的是，斯特鲁普效应的大小预测了启动效应的大小。当任务的顺序颠倒时，启动效应就会消除。通过证明外在和内在因素都可以影响概念激活，我们的发现对语义记忆理论具有启示意义。
