The time course of colour congruency effects in picture naming

Abstract

In our interactions with people and objects in the world around us, as well as in communicating our thoughts, we rely on the use of conceptual knowledge stored in long-term memory. From a frame-theoretic point of view, a concept is represented by a central node and recursive attribute-value structures further specifying the concept. The present study explores whether and how the activation of an attribute within a frame might influence access to the concept's name in language production, focussing on the colour attribute. Colour has been shown to contribute to object recognition, naming, and memory retrieval, and there is evidence that colour plays a different role in naming objects that have a typical colour (high colour-diagnostic objects such as tomatoes) than in naming objects without a typical colour (low colour-diagnostic objects such as bicycles). We report two behavioural experiments designed to reveal potential effects of the activation of an object's typical colour on naming the object in a picture-word interference paradigm. This paradigm was used to investigate whether naming is facilitated when typical colours are presented alongside the to-be-named picture (e.g., the word "red" superimposed on the picture of a tomato), compared to atypical colours (such as "brown"), unrelated adjectives (such as "fast"), or random letter strings. To further explore the time course of these potential effects, the words were presented at different time points relative to the to-be-named picture (Exp. 1: −400 ms, Exp. 2: −200 ms, 0 ms, and + 200 ms). By including both high and low colour-diagnostic objects, it was possible to explore whether the activation of a colour differentially affects naming of objects that have a strong association with a typical colour. The results showed that (pre-)activation of the appropriate colour attribute facilitated naming compared to an inappropriate colour. This was only the case for objects closely connected with a typical colour. Consequences of these findings for frame-theoretic accounts of conceptual representation are discussed.

Bizarreness and Typicality Effects of Color on Object Recognition Memory

“…Theories of object recognition have suggested that when participants encode and recognize objects, shape is the chief feature (e.g., Biederman, 1987;Tarr & Bu¨lthoff, 1998). However, some studies have also reported that color has a crucial role in object recognition (Nako et al, 2016;Reppa et al, 2020;Teichmann et al, 2019), and, color typicality (i.e., colors typically associated with familiar objects) has been shown to play an essential role in early perceptual processes during object recognition (e.g., Lu et al, 2010;Rappaport et al, 2013;Redmann et al, 2019;Tanaka & Presnell, 1999). If bizarreness enhances memory due its cognitive demands, it would seem that color bizarreness should enhance memory.…”

Tomatoes Are Red: The Perception of Achromatic Objects Elicits Retrieval of Associated Color Knowledge

“…If a picture of a banana is presented in yellow, it is recognized faster than if it is presented in an achromatic way or in an atypical color such as purple, indicating a better access to the object concept when the typical object color is present. In picture naming tasks, HCD objects are named faster when presented in their typical colors compared with when they are presented in grayscale format (e.g., Redmann, FitzPatrick, & Indefrey, 2019;Redmann, FitzPatrick, Hellwig, & Indefrey, 2014; see also the meta-analysis by Bramão, Reis, Petersson, & Faísca, 2011). Atypical color presentation simultaneously or just before picture presentation interferes with picture naming of a HCD object (Redmann et al, 2019).…”

“…In picture naming tasks, HCD objects are named faster when presented in their typical colors compared with when they are presented in grayscale format (e.g., Redmann, FitzPatrick, & Indefrey, 2019;Redmann, FitzPatrick, Hellwig, & Indefrey, 2014; see also the meta-analysis by Bramão, Reis, Petersson, & Faísca, 2011). Atypical color presentation simultaneously or just before picture presentation interferes with picture naming of a HCD object (Redmann et al, 2019). It is not clear, however, whether such effects on naming latencies arise at the stage of object recognition or reflect an influence of color information on lexical retrieval.…”