When you see the color red, does the word “red” come to mind? Maybe, maybe not, but if you see the word “red,” the color itself may automatically appear to your mind’s eye.
In other words, the link going from word to image is stronger than the link going from image to word. At any rate that’s what some new research suggests.
Furthermore, the underlying cause may be that there are different circuits for processing words and processing images, and they don’t always communicate with each other.
This is demonstrated by a common parlor trick: Show a person the word “red” in blue letters and half the time they read the word as “blue.”
