Category or Diagnosticity Effect? The Influence of Color in Picture Naming Tasks

MACARENA MARTÍNEZ CUITIÑO; VIVAS, L

Psychology and Neuroscience

Instituto Brasileiro de Neuropsicologia e Comportamento (IBNeC)

Lugar: Rio de Janeiro; Año: 2019

Category effect has largely been studied in picture naming tasks. Introducing color to pictures leads to an improvement in responses but the effect is not homogeneous for all items. Some authors reported that living categories show a larger improvement while others sustain that color diagnosticity is the key factor. The aim of the current paper is to study the impact of both factors by comparing the performance of healthy participants in a picture naming task in color and black-and-white conditions. Three diagnosticity measures were calculated: two of them were extracted from an objective measure: semantic feature production norms, and another was calculated through a subjective measure. Results showed that this last measure, diagnosticity mode, has an impact on response accuracy but not in reaction time, while a category effect was not found. Furthermore, name agreement and typicality were the variables that produced a larger impact in reaction time. Consequently, the results lead to the conclusion that color diagnosticity seems to be responsible for the differences observed between conditions.