The forced-choice triad task has become increasinglypopular in use over recent years. While it is seen as beinga categorisation task (Lin & Murphy, 2001) variation intask instructions often leads to different results. Shipp,Vallée-Tourangeau, and Anthony (2014) used the triadtask to show that when participants are asked to choosean option that ‘goes best with the target’, they are morelikely to select the choice that shares an action relationwhen it also shares taxonomic information. Howeverusing the instruction to select the item that “goes best” isvague and might encourage a strategy other than acategorical decision. The present experiment used thesame triads as in Shipp et al. to test whether participantswould match items based on shared actions or sharedtaxonomic relations when given specific categorisationinstructions. The task instructions were manipulated sothat participants either selected the item that “goes best”,“goes best to form a category” or is “most similar” to thetarget. The results found instances where the instructionsof “goes best to form a category” led to a higherprobability that participants would select the actionchoices over the instructions of “goes best”. Howeverwhen participants were encouraged to use similarityoverall action choices were lower. Therefore the triadtask does encourage a natural categorisation strategy anddifferences in task instructions across research are aresult of the stimuli used.

Recent research has shown that action knowledgeinfluences categorical decisions (Borghi, Flumini, Natraj &Wheaton, 2012; Chao & Martin, 2000; Iachini, Borghi &Senese, 2008; Kalénine, Shapiro, Flumini, Borghi &Buxbaum, 2013). Shipp, Vallée-Tourangeau, and Anthony,(2014) showed that action influences categorisation in aforced-choice triad task when combined with taxonomicinformation and presented within a functional context. Thepresent experiment examined whether participants wouldbe more likely to match items in a triad task based onshared actions following priming with the functionalactions of the objects. Participants engaged in the triad taskused in Shipp et al. after a priming phase where they eitherinteracted with a series of objects for their functionalcapacity (Action Priming), grouped them into categories(Taxonomic Priming) or moved them from one table toanother (Movement Priming). Items within the triads werepresented as an image either on a white background(context-lean condition) or as a functional scene with theobject being used by an agent (context-rich condition).Consistent with Shipp et al. the results showed that actionwas primarily used to base choices on the triad task whenthe action choice also shared a taxonomic relation, and waspresented in context. Additionally, participants were morelikely to select the action related item when they had beenprimed with the functional action of the objects. The resultsare discussed in terms of the transfer effect from the objectinteraction task that facilitates how the objects aresimulated (Barsalou, 1999, 2003; Yeh & Barsalou, 2006).