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Is color continuously activated in mental simulations across a broader discourse context?
Lara N Hoeben Mannaert1, Katinka Dijkstra2, Rolf A Zwaan2
1Erasmus University Rotterdam, Burgemeester Oudlaan 50, Mandeville Building, PO Box 1738, 3000 DR, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. hoebenmannaert@essb.eur.nl.
Memory & Cognition
|August 14, 2020
Summary
Color perception remains active in mental simulations when the object is consistently mentioned. However, activation ceases when the narrative shifts focus, deactivating perceptual information.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Psycholinguistics
- Visual Perception
Background:
- Previous research on perceptual information activation in discourse has yielded conflicting results.
- Understanding how mental simulations maintain or deactivate perceptual details is crucial for discourse comprehension.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the sustained activation of color information in mental simulations across varying discourse contexts.
- To determine the conditions under which perceptual information (color) remains active or becomes deactivated during narrative processing.
Main Methods:
- A sentence-picture verification paradigm was employed across three experiments.
- Participants verified image-color matches or grayscale images following sentences with or without color references.
- Experiments manipulated the presence and position of color information and target object mentions across sentences.
Main Results:
- Color was activated in mental simulations when explicitly mentioned in the final sentence.
- Sustained object presence across sentences maintained color activation, even if color was only mentioned early on.
- Color activation was lost when the target object's presence was interrupted, indicating deactivation.
Conclusions:
- Color remains active in mental simulations contingent on the continuous presence of the target object within the discourse.
- Shifting narrative focus and object discontinuity lead to the deactivation of perceptual information.
- There is no automatic continued activation of color across broader discourse contexts; it is context-dependent.
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