Chapter 1 Colors as Properties: Stroop-Like Effects between Objects and their Colors

Abstract

Abstract Experimental research of the recent decade with chronometric methods has shown that the Stroop interference is far more than only a failure of selective attention. The degree of the interference effects is a very sensitive indicator of internal knowledge structures and the processes that operate on them during elementary naming, categorizing, and comparison tasks. Glaser and Glaser (1989) presented a model to integrate the essential results of Stroop research so far. It contains four essential features. (1) There is a marked functional gap between the semantic memory and the mental lexicon. (2) The semantic memory contains the world knowledge of an individual, the lexicon contains his or her complete linguistic knowledge without semantic capabilities. These systems are specialized for the input and output functions of non-linguistic or linguistic knowledge, respectively. (3) The instruction rule states that in Stroop-like tasks there is a strong, involuntary tendency to process the distractor according to the instruction concerning the target. (4) The dominance rule predicts maximal interference if the perception of a verbal or nonverbal object provides a suitable, but wrong alternative to an internally computed code. In the present experiment, the concept-attribute interference was investigated in order to enlarge the empirical base of this model. The subjects were instructed to name colors as typical attributes of everyday objects that were presented as pictures or as words. In another condition, they had to name typical objects for pictorially or verbally given colors. The results showed a graded pattern of interference effects which is quite consistent with the Glaser and Glaser (1989) model.