The Effect of Conceptual Representations on Attentional Bias
Many cultures have long been instilled with positive and negative concepts, which are associated with spatial metaphors, for instance,“I am feeling down” implies that I feel upset. Recent research (Chasteen, Burdzy & Pratt, 2009; Meier & Robinson, 2005) has suggested that some concepts are strongly ingrained such that they influence how we attend to the environment. In particular, certain positive concepts such as ‘almighty’ and ‘happiness’ bias attention upward and to the right, respectively and negative words‘lucifer’ and ‘mournful’ to the downward and to the left, respectively. Using a larger variety of positive and negative concepts than in previous studies, the current study seeks to determine whether concepts derived from pictures as well as words will produce a shift in attention. We present participants with words or pictures depicting either positive (e.g., smiling baby) or negative concepts (e.g., drug addict). We expect that a target displayed at the top or right‐side of the screen will be detected more quickly for positive concepts and targets displayed at the bottom or left‐side of the screen will be faster for negative. However, whether the response times to targets in the valid conditions will be quicker for words than pictures is unknown. Words could be faster than pictures because previous research has demonstrated that pictures can access concepts in our minds directly, whereas words access indirectly. On the other hand, another theory suggests that both words and pictures access concepts directly; therefore, there may be no difference between pictures and words.