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Meaning is Not a Reflex: Context Dependence of Spatial Congruity Effects
Author(s) -
Casasanto Daniel,
Brookshire Geoffrey,
Ivry Richard
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.498
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 1551-6709
pISSN - 0364-0213
DOI - 10.1111/cogs.12294
Subject(s) - automaticity , psychology , replicate , cognitive psychology , valence (chemistry) , context (archaeology) , replication (statistics) , social psychology , cognition , neuroscience , mathematics , geography , statistics , physics , archaeology , quantum mechanics
In two experiments, Brookshire, Ivry, and Casasanto (2010) showed that words with positive and negative emotional valence can activate spatial representations with a high degree of automaticity, but also that this activation is highly context dependent. Lebois, Wilson‐Mendenhall, and Barsalou (2015) reported that they “aimed to replicate” our study but found only null results in the “Brookshire et al. replication” conditions. Here we express concerns about three aspects of this paper. First, the study was not an attempt to replicate ours; it was a different study that adapted our method. Second, Lebois et al. did not accurately represent our theoretical position. Third, Lebois et al.’s main conclusion, that spatial congruity effects depend on the task context, was not supported by their data. Despite these concerns, we agree with Lebois et al.'s overall message that spatial aspects of words' meanings are activated differently in different contexts. This was a main conclusion of our study as well.