The influence of congruency proportion, target eccentricity, and valence strength on the spatial-valence metaphoric congruency effect in a word valence judgment task

Abstract

In a word valence judgment task, positive words (e.g., excellence) are judged faster when presented at the top (congruent position) than at the bottom of the screen (incongruent position), whereas the opposite pattern occurs for negative words (e.g., disaster). This spatial-valence metaphoric congruency effect reflects top-positive/bottom-negative metaphoric association and may be attributed to at least three possible mechanisms: spreading activation between spatial and valence concepts (activation account), epistemic function that a conceptual metaphor serves to reduce the uncertainty associated with valence concepts (epistemic account), and/or the extent to which spatial-valence metaphoric association is relevant to task demand (relevance account). In three experiments, we manipulated congruency proportion, target eccentricity, and valence strength in a word valence judgment task to test these three possible accounts. Results showed that the metaphoric congruency effect was larger when a high (vs. equal) proportion of targets appears in congruent, relative to incongruent, position, and for targets with strong (vs. weak) valence. However, the effect in reaction time measure was not modulated by whether the target appeared in the position being near vs. far away from the center of the screen. The overall findings are better accommodated by the relevance account. The implications of the current findings on other theoretical accounts, such as Conceptual Metaphor Theory and polarity correspondence account, are also discussed.

Controlled or automatic? Influence of congruency proportion and stimulus-onset asynchrony on the brightness-valence and spatial-valence metaphoric congruency effects

“…The findings might be attributed to (a) the different processes underlying the activation of different types of metaphoric association and/or (b) the possible modulation effect of different tasks used in the two experiments for the two types of metaphor on the underlying processes of the activation of the metaphoric association. Future studies should explore this issue by manipulating the characteristics of stimuli and task parameters (e.g., Tse et al, 2021), as well as the individual differences underlying the activation of metaphoric association (e.g., Fetterman et al, 2016; Tang & Zhu, 2020).…”

Temporal characteristics of the spatial congruency effects of gaze and arrows: A distribution analysis

“…Every object has a unique spatial location that can form various types of representations, including space, semantics, valence, and status (Clark & Brownell, 1975;Tse et al, 2021;Zeng et al, 2019). For example, objects positioned at higher locations in space not only represent their spatial properties but also convey their positive valence and higher status (e.g., Meier & Robinson, 2004).…”