ERIC Number: EJ860159
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2009-Nov
Pages: 6
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0278-7393
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Available Date: N/A
The Influence of Memory on Perception: It's Not What Things Look Like, It's What You Call Them
Mitterer, Holger; Horschig, Jorn M.; Musseler, Jochen; Majid, Asifa
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, v35 n6 p1557-1562 Nov 2009
World knowledge influences how we perceive the world. This study shows that this influence is at least partly mediated by declarative memory. Dutch and German participants categorized hues from a yellow-to-orange continuum on stimuli that were prototypically orange or yellow and that were also associated with these color labels. Both groups gave more "yellow" responses if an ambiguous hue occurred on a prototypically yellow stimulus. The language groups were also tested on a stimulus (traffic light) that is associated with the label "orange" in Dutch and with the label "yellow" in German, even though the objective color is the same for both populations. Dutch observers categorized this stimulus as orange more often than German observers, in line with the assumption that declarative knowledge mediates the influence of world knowledge on color categorization. (Contains 3 figures and 1 footnote.)
Descriptors: Memory, German, Foreign Countries, Visual Perception, Visual Stimuli, Color, Visual Discrimination, Psycholinguistics, Indo European Languages, Cultural Influences, Cultural Differences, College Students, Experimental Psychology
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Germany; Netherlands
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