The Influence of Task Types on the Activation of Object Color Information During Language Processing

Masato Terai (Aichi University of Technology)

27-06-2025

My Research

Vocabulary learning

  • Tests

    • Badger = ??

    • 穴熊 = ??

My Research

  • I know that “穴熊” means “badger,” but I’ve never seen one

  • What is actually understood is also important

Embodied (Grounded) Cognition

  • Humans not only understand the lexical meaning of a word but also activate their accumulated sensory and motor experiences associated with that word (e.g., Barsalou, 2008).

Various Approaches

Embodied Cognition Research

  • Shape (Vision): Reading “Eagle in the sky” elicited faster reaction times to the picture of the eagle with its wings outstretched than with its wings folded (Zwaan et al., 2002).

Eagle in the sky.

Eagle in its nest.

Embodied Cognition Research

  • Scent (Olfaction): Reading scent-related words (e.g., cinnamon) increased activation in olfactory brain areas (González et al., 2006).

Which modality plays the most significant role?

Most words are ground in vision?

  • Lynott et al. (2020)

    • 40,000 English words were rated by native speakers

Retrieved From https://osf.io/46hjf

Lynott et al. (2020)

  • Mean rating scores of vision were higher than other modalities

From Lynott et al. 2020

What is the font color?

赤 赤 赤

Stroop Effect

Receiving inconsistent information causes inhibition.

  • The presence of the Stroop effect is evidence of color activation.

Activation of Color Information

Connell and Lynott (2009)

  • Activation of Object color information

  • Semantic Stroop task

    1. Read a sentence (e.g., Joe was excited to see a bear in the woods.)
    2. A keyword is presented in color ( bear )
    3. Answer the color of the font

Connell and Lynott (2009)

  • Two types of sentences

    • e.g., Joe was excited to see a bear in the woods: brown bear

    • e.g., Joe was excited to see a bear at the North Pole: polar bear

  • Three font colors

    • typical color: bear in Brown

    • atypical color: bear in White

    • unrelated color: bear in Green

Connell and Lynott (2009)

  • Reaction times were faster when the indicated color matched the font color, compared to when they mismatched.

  • Sentence (Joe was excited to see a bear in the woods): 🐻

Connell and Lynott (2009)

  • There were no significant differences between the atypical and unrelated conditions.

    • Readers activated only the typical color of an object.

      • Joe was excited to see a bear in the woods: 🐻

      • Joe was excited to see a bear at the North Pole: 🐻

Difference Between Learning and Acquisition

Difference Between Learning and Acquisition

  • Activation of objects shape is reduced in second language processing (e.g., Chen et al., 2020; Norman & Peleg, 2022, 2023)

Terai (2023)

  • Replicated Connell and Lynott (2009) in both the first and second language

  • Interaction of second language proficiency and typicality (in the second language)

Note

Second language proficiency was operationalized using vocabulary size scores.

New question: Is it possible to activate color information by reading a word without linguistic context?

Huettig et al. (2020)

Huettig et al. (2020)

  • Color information was activated when a task supported the involvement

The Study

Research Questions

  • Does the magnitude of reaction time differences between conditions (i.e., the Stroop effect) differ between the sentence-level and word-level task?

    • Task type: Effect of linguistic context

Lingustic context

  • e.g.,

    • Joe was excited to see a bear in the woods.

      • Stroop: bear

    • The strawberry that Mark bought looked ready to eat.

      • Stroop: strawberry

Terai (2024)

  • Word-level processing

Terai (2023)

Terai (2024)

Analysis

Bayesian mixed-effects models

  • Dependent Variable:

    • RT (reaction time) of the Stroop task

      • Terai (2023): Sentence-level

      • Terai (2024): Word-level

  • Independent Variables:

    • Task type (with/without sentence presentation)

    • Typicality of font color (typical / atypical / unrelated)

    • Interaction (task type × typicality of font color)

  • Random Effects

Results

  • A notable evidence for a main effect of task types and an interaction effect (Task * Typicality)

Post-hoc Analysis

  • Estimated Marginal Means

  • Bars: Median, 75%, and 95% intervals

Discussion

  • On average, reaction times in the word-level task were faster than in the sentence-level task.

  • Conceptual processing:

    • Sentence-level: deeper

    • Word-level: shallower

  • Font color was easier to focus on in the word-level task.

Discussion

  • Tasks that provide prior contextual information promote greater Stroop effect

    • Strong evidence for activating typical color of an object

Note

  • Model with Task Language
  • Task language showed no notable main effects or interactions with other variable.

Conclusion

  • Color activation does not always occur

    • The extent of color activation is influenced by task type (linguistic contexts), regardless of whether the language is L1 or L2.

Important

Color activation is not all-or-none.
In this study, there was no strong evidence supporting color activation in the word-level task with differences large enough to be detected statistically.

Next Question: How can I apply these findings to vocabulary learning studies?

Thank you for listening!

References

  • Barsalou, L. W. (2008). Grounded cognition. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 617–645.

  • Chen, D., Wang, R., Zhang, J., & Liu, C. (2020). Perceptual representations in L1, L2 and L3 comprehension: Delayed sentence–picture verification. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 49(1), 41–57.

  • Connell, L., & Lynott, D. (2009). Is a bear white in the woods? Parallel representation of implied object color during language comprehension. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 16, 573–577.

  • González, J., Barros-Loscertales, A., Pulvermüller, F., Meseguer, V., Sanjuán, A., Belloch, V., & Ávila, C. (2006). Reading cinnamon activates olfactory brain regions. Neuroimage, 32(2), 906–912.

  • Huettig, F., Guerra, E., & Helo, A. (2020). Towards understanding the task dependency of embodied language processing: The influence of colour during language vision interactions. Journal of Cognition, 3(1), 41, 1–19.

  • Lynott, D., Connell, L., Brysbaert, M., Brand, J., & Carney, J. (2020). The Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms: multidimensional measures of perceptual and action strength for 40,000 English words. Behavior research methods, 52, 1271–1291.

  • Norman, T., & Peleg, O. (2022). The reduced embodiment of a second language. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 25(3), 406–416.

  • Norman, T., & Peleg, O. (2023). Visual simulations in the two cerebral hemispheres: A bilingual perspective. Brain and Language, 242, 105291, 1-8.

  • Terai, M. (2023). Activation of Color Information in Second Language Comprehension, Doctoral Dissertation, Nagoya University.

  • Terai, M. (2024). Activation of Color in First and Second Language Vocabulary Processing, The Japanese Society for Language Sciences 2024 Conference Handbook, 32-35.

  • Zwaan, R. A., Stanfield, R. A., & Yaxley, R. H. (2002). Language comprehenders mentally represent the shapes of objects. Psychological Science, 13(2), 168-171.

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