COMPARING COLOR-WORD AND PICTURE-WORD STROOP-LIKE EFFECTS - A TEST OFTHE GLASER AND GLASER (1989) MODEL

Glaser and Glaser (1989) assume that the processing of colors and pict ures is highly similar in that, compared to words, both kinds of stimu lis have privileged access to semantic information. This assumption wa s tested in the present research. In Experiment 1, the season correspo nding to the color or to the word of color-word Stroop stimuli had to be named (e.g., green for spring). In Experiment 2, subjects had to na me the season corresponding to the picture or the word of a picture-wo rd stimulus (e. g., flower for spring). According to Glaser and Glaser (1989), privileged semantic processing of colors and pictures should be evidenced by a larger interfering power of color and picture distra ctors than of word distractors. However, the asymmetric pattern of int erference was observed only with picture-word stimuli (Experiment 2), but not with color-word stimuli (Experiment 1), suggesting that, unlik e pictures, colors do not have privileged access to semantic informati on. It was also found that word distractors interfered with the semant ic processing of pictures, a result that is incompatible with the domi nance rule postulated by Glaser and Glaser (1989). From these results, an adapted version of the Glaser and Glaser model is proposed: colors are assumed to have privileged access to a separate color-processing system and the pattern of interference depends upon the relative activ ation strength of the response alternatives activated by the target an d the distractor.