Abstract
Possible multisensory acquisition of object shape and size knowledge (as proposed by Jeannerod; 1986), may result in distributed representations that are more overlapping with each other than either is with object color. In order to investigate this hypothesis, we evaluated the effect of repeated retrieval of object shape, size, and color knowledge on subsequent retrieval latencies for each of these attributes (i.e., repetition priming). Reaction times (RT) to primed test items were compared to RT's of items introduced during the test tasks in order to obtain a priming score for each prime and test task combination. Consistent with the hypothesis that shape and size knowledge are represented more similarly to one another than to color, priming shape knowledge had a greater facilitation effect on subsequent retrieval of size than color.
This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health RO1 MH60414.