SIZE INFORMATION IN CONCEPTS

Two experiments provide evidence that information about the real-life size of objects is elicited by nouns. A priming paradigm was used with a category membership verification task. The results showed that targets were responded to faster when preceded by a same size prime, and that large entities were processed faster than small ones. Overall, our results significantly extend previous work on perceptual information elicited by concepts [e.g., Zwaan & Yaxley, 2004, Lateralization of object-shape information in semantic processing. Cognition, 94, B35-B43] and, in particular, on size information [e.g., Rubinstein & Henik, 2002, Is an ant larger than a lion? Acta Psychologica, 111, 141-154] by means of a size-unrelated paradigm