Is a Bear White in the Woods? Effects of Implied Perceptual Information on Stroop Color-Naming

Color is undeniably important to object representations, but so too is the ability of context to alter the color of an object. This study examined whether canonical knowledge about typical color or contextual knowledge about scenario-specific color plays a central role in object representation. Participants performed a modified Stroop task that asked them to name the color of a target word (typical or atypical), following presentation of a sentence that implied a (matching or mismatching) color for the target object. Context was found to affect naming of atypical ink colors (e.g., “tomato” in green) with faster responses in the match condition, and with faster naming of typical ink colors (e.g., “tomato” in red) regardless of whether context matched or mismatched. These results suggest that typical color is ordinarily dominant but that unusual contexts cause people to hold in mind both typical and scenario-specific perceptual information.