ON THE NAMING OF COLOR WORDS AND COLOR PATCHES

Subjects can name color words faster than they can name color patches. To account for that effect, a generic model of naming is described wh ich assumes that words access the mental lexicon directly, whereas col or patches do so only indirectly via an initial imaginal or semantic r epresentation. However, Lund (1927) reported that the naming advantage for words disappeared when all the items to be named on a page were t he same (i.e., they were blocked). In the present study, three experim ents are reported that were designed to provide a clearer empirical de finition of Lund's blocking effect and to ascertain the extent to whic h it requires a modification of the generic model. The blocked lists h ad 50 items arranged into 10 blocks, with each block homogeneous with respect to color. The block lengths were either all a predictable leng th of 5 items or they varied randomly from 1 to 9 items. The data indi cated the following: (1) The blocking effect occurred even when the ta sk required a full identification of each item, and (2) the blocking e ffect was confined to within-block transitions. Blocking seemed to eli minate the word advantage by allowing the subject to re-use the lexica l entry used for the immediately prior item, which is consistent with the generic model.