Influence of global precedence on spatial Stroop effect

Abstract

In this study, two experiments were conducted to investigate the influence of global precedence on spatial Stroop effect. Combined stimuli were adopted. In Experiment 1, a Chinese character “上” (up) or “下” (down) was embedded in an up- or down-pointing arrow; the character was the local feature, whereas the arrow was the global feature. In the spatial task, participants were asked to identify arrow orientation, whereas in the meaning task, they were asked to respond to the character meaning. The results revealed that the RTs were longer for the incongruent trials than for the congruent trials (i.e., spatial Stroop effect) in meaning task, but not in the spatial task. In Experiment 2, an arrow was embedded in a character; the arrow was the local feature, whereas the character was the global feature. The results showed that the effect was found in the spatial task, but not in the meaning task. These results suggest that when combined stimuli are adopted, the spatial Stroop effect is modulated by global precedence. Specifically, the magnitudes of spatial Stroop effect were smaller in the global feature identification than those in the local feature identification.