A quest for sources of perceptual richness: Several candidates

Abstract

The aim of this research was to investigate the effect of visual perceptual strength across abstract and concrete words, as well as its relation to the modality in which the word that visual perceptual strength will be negatively correlated with processing cost and will have a stronger effect when there is congruency between the presentation modality and - perceptual modality. In both word groups the level of visual perceptual strength varied on a continuous scale. All groups wof nouns ere presented both in a visual and an auditory an interaction between visual perceptual strength and presentation modality. This interaction revealed that the effect of visual perceptual strength was present only in the visual one predicted. Additional analyses located this effect only to the case of concrete words. While the observed results can only partly be interpreted by Perceptual Symbol Theory, they contradict predictions of amodal theories.