In addition to their perceptual or aesthetic function, colors often carry conceptual meaning. In quizzes, for instance, true and false answers are typically marked in green and red. In three experiments, we used a Stroop task to investigate automatic green-true associations and red-false associations, respectively. In Experiments 1 and 2, stimuli were true statements (e.g., “tables are furniture”) and false statements (e.g., “bananas are buildings”) that were displayed in different combination of green, red, and gray depending on the experimental condition. In Experiment 3, we used true-related and false-related words shown in green, red, or gray. Participants had to indicate the validity (or semantic meaning) of each statement (or word) as fast and as accurately as possible. We expected that participants would perform best when they had to categorize green stimuli as “true” and red stimuli as “false”. The prediction was only confirmed when green and red stimuli were presented within the same context (i.e., same experimental condition). This finding supports the dimension-specificity hypothesis which states that cross-modal associations (here: associations between color and validity) depend on the context (here: the color-context). Moreover, the observed color-validity effects were stronger when participants had to categorize single words instead of sentences and when they had to provide speeded responses. Taken together, these results suggest that controlled processing counteracts the influence of automatic color associations on true/false responses.

除了它们的感知或审美功能外，颜色通常还带有概念意义。例如，在测验中，正确和错误的答案通常用绿色和红色标记。在三个实验中，我们使用 Stroop 任务分别研究自动绿真关联和红假关联。在实验 1 和 2 中，刺激是真实的陈述（例如，“桌子是家具”）和错误的陈述（例如，“香蕉是建筑物”），它们根据实验条件以不同的绿色、红色和灰色组合显示。在实验 3 中，我们使用了以绿色、红色或灰色显示的真相关和假相关的词。参与者必须尽可能快速准确地指出每个陈述（或单词）的有效性（或语义）。我们期望参与者在必须将绿色刺激归类为“真”而红色刺激归类为“假”时表现最佳。只有当绿色和红色刺激出现在相同的背景下（即相同的实验条件）时，该预测才得到证实。这一发现支持维度特异性假设，该假设指出跨模式关联（此处：颜色和有效性之间的关联）取决于上下文（此处：颜色上下文）。此外，当参与者必须对单个单词而不是句子进行分类并且必须提供快速响应时，观察到的颜色效度效果更强。总之，这些结果表明受控处理抵消了自动颜色关联对真/假响应的影响。只有当绿色和红色刺激出现在相同的背景下（即相同的实验条件）时，该预测才得到证实。这一发现支持维度特异性假设，该假设指出跨模式关联（此处：颜色和有效性之间的关联）取决于上下文（此处：颜色上下文）。此外，当参与者必须对单个单词而不是句子进行分类并且必须提供快速响应时，观察到的颜色效度效果更强。总之，这些结果表明受控处理抵消了自动颜色关联对真/假响应的影响。只有当绿色和红色刺激出现在相同的背景下（即相同的实验条件）时，该预测才得到证实。这一发现支持维度特异性假设，该假设指出跨模式关联（此处：颜色和有效性之间的关联）取决于上下文（此处：颜色上下文）。此外，当参与者必须对单个单词而不是句子进行分类并且必须提供快速响应时，观察到的颜色效度效果更强。总之，这些结果表明受控处理抵消了自动颜色关联对真/假响应的影响。这一发现支持维度特异性假设，该假设指出跨模式关联（此处：颜色和有效性之间的关联）取决于上下文（此处：颜色上下文）。此外，当参与者必须对单个单词而不是句子进行分类并且必须提供快速响应时，观察到的颜色效度效果更强。总之，这些结果表明受控处理抵消了自动颜色关联对真/假响应的影响。这一发现支持维度特异性假设，该假设指出跨模式关联（此处：颜色和有效性之间的关联）取决于上下文（此处：颜色上下文）。此外，当参与者必须对单个单词而不是句子进行分类并且必须提供快速响应时，观察到的颜色效度效果更强。总之，这些结果表明受控处理抵消了自动颜色关联对真/假响应的影响。