ABSTRACT
The effects of congruent and incongruent labelling on two simple cognitive tasks, sequence learning and place learning, were investigated. The results of both studies indicate the greater cognitive importance of information derived from the object compared to information derived from the verbal label. J. R. Stroop observed that when a spoken response is requested to a stimulus containing perceptually incongruent cues, that response requires a longer processing time than does an identical response when the cues are congruent. According to Paivio, the verbal system can be described in terms of symbolic structures that are naturally organised in a sequential fashion. As such, the verbal system has an advantage over the imaginal system when the task requires the learning of sequential structure. The order of scores obtained with the various groups of stimuli does not appear to agree with the predicted sequence derived on the basis of dual coding theory.
