Knowing about the Sensory Properties of Objects

Abstract

Verification of object-property relationships, such as those involved in knowing that a canary is yellow, was examined in two studies. In the first study it was found that two variables, the dominance and the typicality of the property to an object, separately influenced verification speed. Moreover, the effectiveness of high over low dominant relationship was greater for atypical than for typical property relationships. The second study examined the two variables in a priming study. Participants were faster in verifying high compared to low typical relationships when primed by a property name; and faster with high compared to low dominant relationships when primed by the object name. This was taken as evidence for the asymmetric accessibility of object and property information. Taken together these findings indicate that the use and comprehension of property information is more complex than has hitherto been acknowledged and suggests that property statements might be verified much of the time by comparing a stored value to a prototypic standard.