Effects of color on perceptual and conceptual tests of implicit memory

Abstract

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.

What colour is the car? Implicit memory for colour information in children

“…Priming proved to be age invariant: The 6-year-olds showed similar amounts of priming to the 10-year-olds. Moreover, amounts of priming observed in a recent study (Wippich & Mecklenbräuker, 1998) with adult participants (11% to 13% in a verbal and 13% in a pictorial choice task) were not higher than those obtained in the present experiments.…”

Object color affects identification and repetition priming

“…The novel and most important discovery of the present study is the finding of substantial color‐specific repetition priming effects. Although several previous investigations (listed in the last section of Table 1) have revealed a priming advantage for objects that were displayed in the same color at study and test, these effects were typically small and not significant, except for one investigation (Wippich & Mecklenbrauker, 1998). In contrast, in the present study we found unambiguous evidence for a color‐specific priming effect.…”

Colour specificity in episodic and in perceptual object recognition with enhanced colour impact

“…This can be seen as an involuntary contribution of an episodic memory trace to performances in an implicit memory task. As mentioned, we have already shown that another implicit colour effect, i.e., the preference for old colours in a colouring task (Wippich & Mecklenbra Èuker, 1998) is caused by the same memory traces which are accessed in an explicit memory task . Results from other experiments suggest that object recognition tasks behave similarly, and that also for this task the exemplar specific information is represented within the episodic memory trace and this item-specific memory is independent of memory within generic information caused by implicit effects of the previous study phase.…”