Red is no Warmer than Blue: A Challenge to the Semantic Coding Hypothesis

Abstract

Participants were simultaneously presented with a colour square on a monitor (red, black or blue) and a temperature at their fingertip using a peltier tile (warm, room temperature or cool). Each stimulus pair was presented in congruent (red-warm and blue-cool) and incongruent (red-cool and blue-warm) combinations. Latencies were recorded for each participant's verbal response when naming the colour and the temperature. The semantic coding hypothesis proposes that although input patterns and types are different for different sense organs, interactions can occur after these inputs have been recoded at post-perceptual levels. For example, reaction times to a simultaneously presented high-pitched tone and light source above head height might be shorter than those to a low-pitched tone and light source above head height because the recoded inputs of the former share the post-perceptual format “high”, whereas the later do not (ie, the later are incongruent). In our experiment, response times were similar regardless of whether the stimulus pair was “congruent” or “incongruent”, suggesting that while it is commonly believed that red is a warm colour and blue is cold, this kind of correspondence did not facilitate shorter latencies as it should according to the semantic coding hypothesis.