The Relationship Of Color Implicit Cognition And Cognitive Control

Color, as a common stimuli when the human contact with the external environment, not only causes the corresponding perceptual responses, more through associative memories and associative things such as a series of psychological operation, causes certain emotions and motivation, and then affects the thinking, cognitive and other high-level psychological activity. In Chinese traditional color sense, the red is often related with red Chinese knot, red lanterns and other things, meaning warm, sexy; the blue is related with blue sky, sea, on behalf of peace, melancholy meaning. On the basis of west culture, Elliot raised that red often linked to teacher rating, traffic lights, representing error, risk,may further induce avoidance motivation; blue linked to sky, on behalf of peace and relaxation, can induce approach motivation. Compared with the west on implicit cognition of color, when Chinese percept the color of red, it may induce implicit meanings different from the west, namely red evokes relatively positive psychological information. In order to make sure the possible implicit cognition difference of color, we use a rigorous experimental method to distinguish. Greenwald proposed the implicit association test (IAT) is a more effective tool to indirectly measure this implicit connection, through calculating the reaction time of two kinds of concepts (the target concepts and attributes of the concept) classification tasks to measure the intrinsic connection. The current study by using the experimental model, compares the classification task response time when color and property words are in different connecting situations which can determine the emotional, motivational implicit connection degree of color, and finally in the use of Chinese Subjects, to find the implicit meanings of red and blue.A large number of experimental have found color used as background information can impact the current cognitive processes through its implicit cognitive meaning and then disturb or improve cognitive operation. Bellizzi found, in individual consumer decision-making, product packaging color will affect purchase intention. Hatta also found when subjects take creative task, experimental environment of different colors will affect the creative thinking effectively. On the effect of the color implicit cognition on cognitive control, there are rare studies abroad and almost no at home. Cognitive control is the current psychology research in the field direction. Specific to the psychophysical experiments it means that subjects in accordance with the instructions, attention to the target stimulus, neglect or inhibited non-target stimulus interfering, solve the target stimuli and non-target stimulus conflict, control response selection, maintain the correct response and the target task, as well as monitoring environmental warning and risk information. A series of research have found cognitive control will be affected by emotion, motivation, aging, subliminal priming. Then as the task background color, possibly through implicit emotional and motivational connection, can obstruct or promote cognitive control. AX-CPT and Flanker paradigm are more mature experimental models applied in cognitive control study, By AX-CPT task, we can observe the changing of cognitive strategies on the color background; through the Flanker task, we can see the effect of different color background on cognitive conflict resolution.In the current study, we choose the background color as environment variable to test cognitive control in red and blue color background. In experiment land 2, we used IAT task to find the degree of implicit connection between color block and words including positive emotional words, negative emotional words, approaching motive words and avoiding motive words. Then it was found that red block is closely connected with approach motivation of words and positive emotional words, and blue block relative to the red block, is closely linked to negative emotional words and avoidance motive words. results support that subjects from Chinese culture have implicit cognitive tendency to positive direction when face red, while the blue tend to negative direction. red is generally has positive significance. On the basis of knowing the implicit cognition of color, we used AX-CPT task in experiment 3 to test the tendency of Proactive control and Reactive control applied under the background of color red and blue. Then it is found in the trend of proactive control strategy, on the red background cognitive strategies become flexible, there is a tendency for reactive control tendency; but on the blue background proactive control tend to get more effectively strengthen. The results show that, with positive implicit meaning red make the subjects in task requesting strategy flexibility, can respond to stimulus changing, and make the task results more better. To further test the active effect of red on cognitive control, we took Flanker task as experiment 4 to test whether color background effects cognitive conflict resolution. It was found red make the conflict curtailed, while blue gave the opposite result, which mean Red with positive implicit significance is in favor of cognitive control.The study to exploring the implicit cognition of cold and warm color and the effects of color as the environmental factors on cognitive control, can give the following conclusions:first, in the context of Chinese culture, implicit cognition of color red is positive, while in Western culture red is a negative meaning. It is the different point of view between cultures, that red has implicit connection with positive emotions and approach motivation. Secondly, red compared to blue, through its positive implicit meaning, make the cognitive control function of subjects more effective, so that cognitive strategies tend to be flexible and the cognitive conflict is solved effectively.