Visuospatial or verbal-spatial codes? The different effect of two secondary tasks on the power-space associations during a semantic categorizing task

Abstract

The power-space associations have been extensively studied as a possible way to reveal the nature of concept representations, while the visuospatial and verbal-spatial codes are two primary explanations for the phenomenon. In two experiments, we imposed either a visuospatial or a verbal secondary task during the semantic categorizing of power words to examine their respective roles. The results showed that retaining a letter but not a location concurrently interfered with the power-space association. The results suggested that the verbal-spatial codes might play a more fundamental role than the visuospatial codes in the power-space associations during the semantic categorizing of power words.

Keywords: Dual-task paradigm; Power and space; Semantic categorizing; Verbal–spatial codes; Visuospatial codes.