The role of colour in implicit and explicit memory performance.

Full Abstract

We present two experiments that examine the effects of colour transformation between study and test (from black and white to colour and vice versa, of from incorrectly coloured to correctly coloured and vice versa) on implicit and explicit measures of memory for diagnostically coloured natural objects (e.g., yellow banana). For naming and coloured-object decision (i.e., deciding whether an object is correctly coloured), there were shorter response times to correctly coloured-objects than to black-and-white and incorrectly coloured-objects. Repetition priming was equivalent for the different stimulus types. Colour transformation did not influence priming of picture naming, but for coloured-object decision priming was evident only for objects remaining the same from study to test. This was the case for both naming and coloured-object decision as study tasks. When participants were asked to consciously recognize objects that they had named or made coloured-object decisions to previously, whilst ignoring their colour, colour transformation reduced recognition efficiency. We discuss these results in terms of the flexibility of object representations that mediate priming and recognition.

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Author information

Author/s: Vernon, David (D); Lloyd-Jones, Toby J (TJ);

Affiliation: Department of Cognitive Neuroscience and Behaviour, Imperial College, Charing Cross Campus, St Dunstan's Road, London W6 8RF, UK. d.vernon@ic.ac.uk

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. A, Human experimental psychology (Q J Exp Psychol A), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2003-Jul; vol 56 (issue 5) : pp 779-802

Dates: Created 2003/07/28; Completed 2003/10/03; Revised 2004/11/17;

PMID: 12884836, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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