Linguistic labels exert a particularly strong top-down influence on perception. The potency of this influence has been ascribed to their ability to evoke category-diagnostic features of concepts. In doing this, they facilitate the formation of a perceptual template concordant with those features, effectively biasing perceptual activation towards the labelled category. In this study, we employ a cueing paradigm with moving, point-light stimuli across three experiments, in order to examine how the number of biological motion features (form and kinematics) encoded in lexical cues modulates the efficacy of lexical top-down influence on perception. We find that the magnitude of lexical influence on biological motion perception rises as a function of the number of biological motion-relevant features carried by both cue and target. When lexical cues encode multiple biological motion features, this influence is robust enough to mislead participants into reporting erroneous percepts, even when a masking level yielding high performance is used.

No abstract

In this commentary, we approach the topic of linguistic relativity from a predictive coding perspective. Discussing the role of “priors” in shaping perception, we argue that language creates an important set of priors for humans, which can affect how sensory information is processed and interpreted. Namely, languages create conventionalized conceptual systems for their speakers, mirroring and reinforcing what is behaviorally important in a society. As such, they create collective conceptual convergence on how to categorize the world and thus “streamline” what people rely on to guide their perception.