Polarity Correspondence as a General Compatibility Principle

Proctor, Robert W.; Xiong, Aiping

doi:10.1177/0963721415607305

Cited by 43 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…These results suggest that emotional magnitude, when assessed using unconfounded stimuli in a sufficiently sensitive task, may indeed be spatialized as originally proposed by H&L. Admittedly, however, the results do not provide unambiguous support for spatialization. As with most binary classification tasks, the findings are also consistent with an alternative explanation based on polarity correspondence (Proctor & Xiong, ). Participants responded faster when the poles of one of the stimulus dimensions (intensity: more/less) and the response dimension (left/right) corresponded (i.e., +polar: more intense and right ; ‐polar: less intense and left ) than when they did not (i.e., more intense and left ; less intense and right )—a congruity effect that may reflect structural overlap between the dimensions, rather than spatialization per se.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 83%

Is Emotional Magnitude Spatialized? A Further Investigation

2019

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Accumulating evidence suggests that different magnitudes (e.g., number, size, and duration) are spatialized in the mind according to a common left–right metric, consistent with a generalized system for representing magnitude. A previous study conducted by two of us (Holmes & Lourenco, ) provided evidence that this metric extends to the processing of emotional magnitude, or the intensity of emotion expressed in faces. Recently, however, Pitt and Casasanto () showed that the earlier effects may have been driven by a left–right mapping of mouth size rather than emotional magnitude, and they found no evidence for an emotional magnitude mapping when using words as stimuli. Here, we report two new experiments that further examine these conclusions. In Experiment 1, using face stimuli with mouths occluded, we replicate the original finding: Less emotional faces were associated with the left and more emotional faces with the right. However, we also find that people can reliably infer the sizes of the occluded mouths, and that these inferred mouth sizes can explain the observed left–right mapping. In Experiment 2, we show that comparative judgments of emotional words yield a left–right mapping of emotional magnitude not attributable to stimulus confounds. Based on these findings, we concur with Pitt and Casasanto that faces pose challenges for isolating the forces driving spatialization, but we suggest that emotional magnitude, when assessed using unconfounded stimuli in a sufficiently sensitive task, may indeed be spatialized as originally proposed. Suggestions for further research on the spatialization of emotional magnitude are discussed.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 83%

Is Emotional Magnitude Spatialized? A Further Investigation

2019

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“…Bipolar organization, polarity attribution, and parallel polarity Osgood and Richards (1973) start with the proposition that conceptual dimensions are represented as bipolar oppositions. An impressive number of theories in cognitive psychology and linguistics support the idea that polar opposition is a crucial part of conceptual thought (e.g., Banks, Clark, & Lucy, 1975;Greenwald et al, 2002;Holmes & Lourenco, 2011;Kornblum & Lee, 1995;Kruschke, 1992;Medin & Schaffer, 1978;Murphy, 1996;Osgood & Richards, 1973;Paradis & Willners, 2011;Proctor & Cho, 2006;Proctor & Xiong, 2015;Walsh, 2003).…”

Section: Dimensions Of Meaningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Current theories about polarity correspondence suggest that concepts are associated when they both form the plus pole or minus pole on any dimension (e.g., Proctor & Xiong, 2015). However, as outlined above, concepts are represented in a multidimensional space, and consequently, each concept is represented along multiple conceptual dimensions.…”

Section: Dimensions Of Meaningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We then used the dimensionspecificity hypothesis to explain previously observed context-effects between brightness and valence or activity (Experiment 2), and in Experiment 3, we tested a more subtle prediction of the dimension-specificity hypothesis that examined how categorization labels of the task influence salience of dimensions of meaning. Before we present the dimension-specificity hypothesis in more detail, we first review theories on which the dimensionspecificity hypothesis is built, including the affective theory of meaning (Osgood et al, 1957) and the polarity correspondence principle (Proctor & Cho, 2006;Proctor & Xiong, 2015).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Predicting Context-Dependent Cross-Modal Associations with Dimension-Specific Polarity Attributions Part 1 – Brightness and Aggression

Schietecat

Lakens

IJsselsteijn

et al. 2018

Collabra: Psychology

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Although researchers have repeatedly shown that the meaning of the same concept can vary across different contexts, it has proven difficult to predict when people will assign which meaning to a concept, and which associations will be activated by a concept. Building on the affective theory of meaning (Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957) and the polarity correspondence principle (Proctor & Cho, 2006), we propose the dimension-specificity hypothesis with the aim to understand and predict the contextdependency of cross-modal associations. We present three sets of experiments in which we use the dimension-specificity hypothesis to predict the cross-modal associations that should emerge between aggression-related concepts and saturation and brightness. The dimension-specificity hypothesis predicts that cross-modal associations emerge depending upon which affective dimension of meaning (i.e., the evaluation, activity, or potency dimension) is most salient in a specific context. The salience of dimensions of meaning is assumed to depend upon the relative conceptual distances between bipolar opposed concept pairs (e.g., good vs. bad). The dimension-specificity hypothesis proposes that plus and minus polarities will be attributed to the bipolar concepts, and associations between concrete and affective abstract concepts that share plus or minus polarities will become activated. Our data support the emergence of dimensionspecific polarity attributions. We discuss the potential of dimension-specific polarity attributions to understand and predict how the context influences the emergence of cross-modal associations.Keywords: cross-modal associations; context-effects; affective dimensions of meaning; color; brightness "It is clear that everything on this planet is relative and has independent existence only insofar as it is distinguished in its relations to and from other things… since every conception is thus the twin of its opposite, how could it be thought of first, how could it be communicated to others who tried to think of it, except by being measured against its opposite?" Abel (as cited in Freud, Collected Papers, Strachey edn, IV, p. 187) Understanding how we give meaning to concepts lies at the core of being able to predict how people behave, think and feel. Studies in cognitive psychology, social cognition, and linguistics convincingly show that taskspecific contexts play a crucial role when constructing meaning and when engaging in conceptual thought (e.g.,

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“…For instance, spatial-numerical associations could also stem from a general WM mechanism for binding sequential order with spatial templates (Abrahamse, van Dijck, & Fias, 2016;Guida, Leroux, Lavielle-Guida, & Noël, 2016), or from the principle of polarity correspondence in tasks with orthogonal stimulus dimensions (Proctor & Xiong, 2015). Particularly, we here focus on investigations into a domain-general cognitive mechanism for SNARC and aim to provide insights into the cross-validity of this mechanism for the generation of numerical SNARC and non-numerical SNARC-like effects in the ordinal weekday sequence.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Space in numerical and ordinal information: A common construct?

2017

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Space is markedly involved in numerical processing, both explicitly in instrumental learning and implicitly in mental operations on numbers. Besides action decisions, action generations, and attention, the response-related effect of numerical magnitude or ordinality on space is well documented in the Spatial-Numerical Associations of Response Codes (SNARC) effect. Here, right-over left-hand responses become relatively faster with increasing magnitude positions. However, SNARC-like behavioral signatures in non-numerical tasks with ordinal information were also observed and inspired new models integrating seemingly spatial effects of ordinal and numerical metrics. To examine this issue further, we report a comparison between numerical SNARC and ordinal SNARC-like effects to investigate group-level characteristics and individual-level deductions from generalized views, i.e., convergent validity. Participants solved order-relevant (before/ after classification) and order-irrelevant tasks (font color classification) with numerical stimuli 1-5, comprising both magnitude and order information, and with weekday stimuli, comprising only ordinal information. A small correlation between magnitude-and order-related SNARCs was observed, but effects are not pronounced in order-irrelevant color judgments. On the group level, order-relevant spatialnumerical associations were best accounted for by a linear magnitude predictor, whereas the SNARC effect for weekdays was categorical. Limited by the representativeness of these tasks and analyses, results are inconsistent with a single amodal cognitive mechanism that activates space in mental processing of cardinal and ordinal information alike. A possible resolution to maintain a generalized view is proposed by discriminating different spatial activations, possibly mediated by visuospatial and verbal working memory, and by relating results to findings from embodied numerical cognition. Abstract concepts are often embedded into physical space: Numerical magnitudes increase to the right of a number line, weekdays are spatially organized in calendars, and the first step in a user manual is usually

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Polarity Correspondence as a General Compatibility Principle

Cited by 43 publications

References 34 publications

Is Emotional Magnitude Spatialized? A Further Investigation

Is Emotional Magnitude Spatialized? A Further Investigation

Predicting Context-Dependent Cross-Modal Associations with Dimension-Specific Polarity Attributions Part 1 – Brightness and Aggression

Space in numerical and ordinal information: A common construct?

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