SOME words really do conjure up mental images, and that can drive you to distraction – literally.
Zachary Estes at the University of Warwick, UK, and his team asked students to identify a target letter appearing briefly at the top or bottom of a computer screen. Just before the letter appeared, some saw the word “hat” in the centre of the screen. Those students were slower and less accurate at identifying the target letter if it then appeared at the top of the screen (Psychological Science, DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02051.x).
Estes thinks the brain associates “hat” with the “up” position, and conjures…
