Wippich W, Mecklenbräuker S
Department of Psychology, University of Trier, Germany.
Psychol Res. 1998;61(4):285-94. doi: 10.1007/s004260050033.
Two experiments are reported that explore why recent investigations of implicit memory failed to find any effects of color information on test performance. In the first experiment, participants studied colored pictures as well as words printed in colored ink without any memory instructions. During the test phase, a verbal and a pictorial version of a color-choice task (a conceptual priming test) were compared to two perceptual tests (word-stem completion and picture-fragment identification). Similar and significant amounts of priming to color occurred in both color-choice tasks. The perceptual tests were found to be sensitive to changes in the stimulus-presentation mode from study to test, but stimuli remaining the same color and those changed to black-and-white did not differ in the priming scores. In the second experiment, a mild division of attention was introduced in the study phase. Once again, priming to color was observed only in the verbal version of a color-choice test and not in the word-stem completion test. Dividing attention did not decrease performance on both implicit tests, whereas an explicit test of color recall for studied pictures suffered from dividing attention at encoding. It is concluded that a perceptual attribute such as color may be represented and coded by conceptual processing. Furthermore, automatic (or not attention-demanding) encoding processes may suffice for later conceptual tests of implicit memory. Previous failures to find any effects of color information on implicit performance are attributed to the use of perceptual priming tests.
本文报告了两项实验，探究为何近期对内隐记忆的研究未能发现颜色信息对测试表现有任何影响。在第一个实验中，参与者在没有任何记忆指令的情况下，学习彩色图片以及用彩色墨水打印的单词。在测试阶段，将颜色选择任务（一种概念性启动测试）的言语和图片版本与两项知觉测试（词干补全和图片碎片识别）进行比较。在两项颜色选择任务中，对颜色的启动效应相似且显著。研究发现，知觉测试对从学习到测试的刺激呈现方式的变化敏感，但颜色保持不变的刺激和变为黑白的刺激在启动分数上没有差异。在第二个实验中，在学习阶段引入了轻度的注意力分散。同样，仅在颜色选择测试的言语版本中观察到对颜色的启动效应，而在词干补全测试中未观察到。注意力分散并未降低两项内隐测试的表现，而对学习图片的颜色回忆的显性测试在编码时受到注意力分散的影响。得出的结论是，诸如颜色这样的知觉属性可能通过概念加工来表征和编码。此外，自动（或无需注意力要求）的编码过程可能足以用于后期内隐记忆的概念性测试。先前未能发现颜色信息对内隐表现有任何影响，归因于使用了知觉启动测试。
