Does Perceptual Simulation Explain Spatial Effects in Word Categorization?

Chinese Children with Congenital and Acquired Blindness Represent Concrete Concepts in Vertical Space through Tactile Perception

Many studies have tested perceptual symbols in conceptual processing and found that perceptual symbols contain experiences from multisensory channels. However, whether the disability of one sensory channel affects the processing of the perceptual symbols and then affects conceptual processing is still unknown. This line of research would extend the perceptual symbol theory and have implications for language rehabilitation and mental health for people with disabilities. Therefore, the present study filled in this gap and tested whether Chinese children with congenital and acquired blindness have difficulty in recruiting perceptual symbols in the processing of concrete concepts. Experiment 1 used the word-pair-matching paradigm to test whether blind children used vertical space information in understanding concrete word pairs. Experiment 2 used the word-card-pairing paradigm to test the role of tactile experiences in the processing of concrete concepts for blind children. Results found that blind children automatically activated the spatial information of referents in the processing of concepts through the tactile sensory channel even when the visual sensory channel was disabled. This finding supported the compensatory phenomenon of other sensory channels in conceptual representation. In addition, the difference between elementary school blind children and middle school blind children in judging the spatial position of concrete words also indicated the vital influence of perceptual experiences on perceptual symbols in conceptual representation. Interestingly, there were no significant differences between children with congenital or acquired blindness. This might suggest that the compensatory of other sensory channels did not have a sensitive period. This study not only provided new evidence for the perceptual symbol theory but also found that perceptual symbols could be developed by a compensatory mechanism. This compensatory mechanism can be used to develop a rehabilitation program for improving language learning in blind children. Improved language ability in blind children will also improve their mental health problems caused by difficulties in social interaction (e.g., social anxiety).

The roles of symbolic and numerical representations in asymmetric visual search

This study aims to explore the impact of symbolic and numerical representations in asymmetric visual search. Heterogeneous and homogeneous mathematical units, letters, symbols and numbers were used in the first and second experiments, respectively. Target was searched among 6 or 12 stimuli. Analysis showed that the search efficiency was greatest in LaS (large among small), but the performance decreased significantly in SaS (small among small). Moreover, LaS was faster than SaL (small among large). However, SaL was faster than LaL (large among large) and LaL was faster than SaS. The findings of this study showed that the search efficiency was indirectly proportional to the number of stimuli. This implies that processing of visual stimuli of different sizes and appearance was asymmetric, all requiring varied attention. In summary, these findings strengthen the integration theory, similarity theory and guided search model.

Compatibility between response position and either object typical size or semantic category: SNARC- and MARC-like effects in primary school children

In two experiments, we administered two binary classification tasks to third- to fifth-grade students and found that either the conceptual size (Experiment 1) or semantic category (Experiment 2) of the target picture interacted with response position: Participants emitted faster and/or more accurate right- and left-side responses to stimuli referring to typically large and small objects (i.e., a SNARC [spatial-numerical association of response codes]-like effect) or to living and nonliving objects (i.e., a MARC [markedness association of response codes]-like effect), respectively. The effect of either stimulus dimension was present only when this dimension was the task-relevant one. These findings may be accounted for by the polarity compatibility principle. In binary classification tasks, one of the two relevant stimulus values (i.e., the dominant one) and one of the two response values would be coded as having a positive polarity, whereas the other would be coded as having a negative polarity. Response selection would be faster and/or more accurate when stimulus and response polarities are compatible. According to a less parsimonious hypothesis, the polarity principle would only explain the effect of the stimulus semantic category in Experiment 2, whereas the effect of stimulus conceptual size in Experiment 1 might be traced back to the fact that children spatially code the typical size of stimulus referents (even if only when the task requires accessing this stimulus dimension). Small and large objects would be represented relatively on the left and right, respectively, which would result in faster and/or more accurate responses when response position is compatible with the stimulus referent's position in this spatial representation.