The influence of vertical spatial orientation on property verification

Abstract

According to the spatial registration hypothesis, the representation of stimulus location is automatically encoded during perception and it can interact with a more abstract linguistic representation. We tested this hypothesis in two experiments, using the semantic judgements of words. In the first experiment, words for animals that either fly or do not fly were presented either in the upper or lower part of a display relative to the fixation point. Reaction times showed significant interaction between the spatial position and the word type. The words for flying animals were judged faster when they were presented in the upper part while the words for non-flying animals were processed faster in the lower part of the display. In the second experiment we extended the stimulus set to words denoting non-living things which are associated with either upper or lower spatial position. Again, reaction times showed significant interaction between the actual spatial position where the words were presented, and their implicit association with upper or lower spatial position. The results provide support for the claim that spatial representation has an active role in lexical processing.

We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments which significantly improved this manuscript. Also, our thanks go to Igor Bajšanski for discussion on the previous version of the manuscript, and to Ines Širola and Igor Majcen for help in the data collection.