We investigated sensitivity for the vertical meaning of the German particle ab by means of stimulus-response compatibility effects. In German, the particle ab is ambiguous and can take on a vertical meaning (downward) as in Auf und Ab (engl. up and down), but it can also take on nonvertical or nonspatial meanings as in Ab und An (engl. from time to time). We show that the particle ab only creates a spatial compatibility effect relative to the German particle auf (Experiment 1) but not relative to the particle an (Experiment 2). Furthermore, as participants executed upward versus downward responses in both Experiments 1 and 2, the mere vertical antagonism of the responses was insufficient to instill a verticality-based compatibility effect. In addition, the compatibility effect was restricted to the transparent version of the particle. If a letter sequence corresponding to the particles was presented in a semantically and morphologically opaque way (e.g., the letters ab were embedded in the German word knabe, engl. boy), no compatibility effect was found, underlining that the effect was due to word meanings rather than visual features. The results underscore the boundary conditions for using compatibility effects in investigating lexical and semantic spatial processing in humans.

中文翻译：

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感官和敏感度-使用空间响应兼容性效应研究歧义词的含义。

我们通过刺激-反应相容效应研究了德国粒子ab垂直含义的敏感性。在德语中，粒子ab含糊不清，可以像Auf und Ab（向上和向下）一样具有垂直含义（向下），但是也可以像Ab und An（从engl。开始）一样具有非垂直或非空间含义。时间）。我们表明，粒子ab只会产生相对于德国粒子auf（实验1）的空间相容性效果，而不会产生相对于粒子anuf（实验2）的空间相容性效果。此外，由于参与者在实验1和实验2中都执行了向上与向下的响应，因此，仅响应的垂直拮抗作用不足以灌输基于垂直性的兼容性效果。另外，相容性作用限于颗粒的透明形式。如果对应于粒子的字母序列以语义和形态上不透明的方式呈现（例如，字母ab嵌入在德语单词knabe，engl。boy中），则不会发现兼容效果，强调该效果是由于单词引起的意义而不是视觉特征。结果强调了在研究人类的词汇和语义空间处理中使用相容性效应的边界条件。