ISSN 0439-755X
CN 11-1911/B

Acta Psychologica Sinica ›› 2022, Vol. 54 ›› Issue (7): 772-778.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2022.00772

• Reports of Empirical Studies • Previous Articles     Next Articles

The effect of secondary task on power-space interactions during the performance of a semantic category judgment task

ZHU Lei(), SAI Xueying, Mulati Jiadela   

  1. Department of Psychology, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China
  • Published:2022-07-25 Online:2022-05-19
  • Contact: ZHU Lei E-mail:Judy1981_81@hotmail.com
  • Supported by:
    Humanities and Social Sciences Program of the Ministry of Education(18YJC190035);research fund of the School of Social Development and Public Policy of Fudan University

Abstract:

There is mounting evidence suggesting that power is represented as vertical space in our brain, specifically, as verbal-spatial coding (amodal representation) and visuospatial coding (modal representation). These two types of coding are context-dependent, and the activation of which type depends on the current task. Previous studies have found that a semantic category judgment task mainly activates verbal-spatial coding. However, it is still unclear whether a semantic category judgment task also activates visuospatial coding when verbal-spatial coding is excluded. Thus, the present study aimed to explore this issue using a dual-task paradigm. Results showed that power-space interactions occurred under single-task conditions, and under dual-task conditions, the interactions were affected only by a visual-spatial secondary task. Our findings suggest that the semantic category judgment task also relies on visuospatial coding, and further support the idea that a power-space representation is context-dependent.

Key words: power-space representations, context-dependent, visuospatial coding, verbal-spatial coding