Latencies for movement naming with congruent and incongruent word stimuli

Abstract

Naming of movement directions was found to be subject to a small but significant amount of interference from incongruent names integrated with the movement stimuli. The delay of direction naming was less than the larga delay of color naming when colors and incongruent color names were combined in the Stroop test. A hypothesis that faster processing of movement directions than of colors is the basis of this difference in interference was tested by beginning the processing of the words at various intervals prior to their movement. No appreciable increase in interference resulted from any of these stationary preexposures of the words. When word preexposures were longest (200 and 300 msec), interference was reduced. The reduced naming interference for movement direction and other dimensions compared to color suggests a basic difference between the central processing of color and other dimensions. Conditions with congruent combination of words and directions provided substantial speeding of direction naming over control conditions. © 1972 Psychonomic Society, Inc.