Do linguistic stimuli activate experiential colour traces related to the entities they refer to and, if so, under what circumstances?

Abstract

The simulation view of language comprehension holds that lexical-semantic access prompts the re-enactment of sensorimotor experiences that regularly accompany word use. For the colour domain, this suggests that reading about a stop sign reactivates experiences involving the perception of the stop sign and hence experiences involving the colour red. However, it is still not clear what circumstances would limit reactivation of colour experiences during comprehension, if the activation takes place. To address this question, we varied in our study the conditions in which the target colour stimuli appeared. The experimental stimuli were individual words (Experiment (Exp.) 1, Exp. 7, 8) or sentences (Exp. 2–6) referring to objects with a typical colour of either green or red (e.g., cucumber or raspberry). Across experiments, we manipulated the presence of fillers (present or not), and whether fillers referred to objects with other colour (e.g., honey) or objects without any particular colour (e.g., car). The stimuli were presented along with two clickable “yes” and “no” buttons, one of which was red and the other green. Location and button colour varied from trial to trial. The tasks were lexical decision (Exp. 1, Exp. 7–8) and sensibility judgement (Exp. 2–6). We observed faster response times in the match vs mismatch condition in all word-based experiments, but only in those sentence-based experiments that did not have fillers. This suggests that comprehenders indeed reactivate colour experiences when processing linguistic stimuli referring to objects with a typical colour, but this activation seems to occur only under certain circumstances.