Seeing Objects through the Language Glass

Abstract

Abstract■ Recent streams of research support the Whorfian hypothesis according to which language affects oneʼs perception of the world. However, studies of object categorization in different languages have heavily relied on behavioral measures that are fuzzy and inconsistent. Here, we provide the first electrophysiological evidence for unconscious effects of language terminology on object perception. Whereas English has two words for cup and mug, Spanish labels those two objects with the word "taza."We tested native speakers of Spanish and English in an object detection task using a visual oddball paradigm, while measuring event-related brain potentials. The early deviant-related negativity elicited by deviant stimuli was greater in English than in Spanish participants. This effect, which relates to the existence of two labels in English versus one in Spanish, substantiates the neurophysiological evidence that language-specific terminology affects object categorization. ■

No matter how: Top-down effects of verbal and semantic category knowledge on early visual perception

“…Holmes et al, 2009;Maier et al, 2014;Thierry et al, 2009). Even though the effect as such is numerically small, this result is relevant, because it helps to bridge the gap between the behavioral benefit associated with CP and electrophysiological signatures found in the present and several previous studies (Boutonnet et al, 2013;Forder et al, 2017;Holmes et al, 2009;Mo, Xu, Kay, & Tan, 2011;Thierry, 2016;Thierry et al, 2009), by showing behavioral and ERP effects in the same task.…”

“…One recent study found color CP in the P1 component to predict access to visual consciousness in the attentional blink paradigm . Other studies found CP effects starting in the N1 time range (Boutonnet, Dering, Vinas-Guasch, & Thierry, 2013;Thierry et al, 2009;Yu et al, 2017), interpreted as a visual mismatch negativity, suggesting an effect of linguistic categories on preattentive perception (Thierry et al, 2009). In the context of visual object perception, the N1 is usually seen as an indicator of configural processing during early visual perception (Rossion & Jacques, 2011;Tanaka & Curran, 2001).…”

Can the English stand the bottle like the Dutch? Effects of relational categories on object perception

“…These results suggest a stronger perceptual discrimination of a linguistically encoded, but task-irrelevant visual contrast. In a similar vein, Boutonnet, Dering, Viñas-Guasch, and Thierry (2013) studied effects of language on object perception. Whereas English distinguishes between cups and mugs, Spanish has one label for both items (taza).…”

“…Moreover, we will examine at what level of processing these effects may arise, i.e., at the level of judgement, attention or core perception (see Firestone & Scholl, 2016;Raftopoulos, 2017). In order to fully exploit the categorizing function of language, we will adopt a picture-matching paradigm, rather than a target detection paradigm (used in Boutonnet et al, 2013;Thierry et al, 2009). These latter studies involved paradigms with only one exemplar of the category of interest (e.g., a circle, a cup) and participants were exposed to this exemplar for a large number of trials, limiting the generalizability of their results (see Maier, Glage, Hohlfeld, & Abdel Rahman, 2014).…”

“…In addition, experimental manipulations of the stimulus dimensions are relevant to the matching task, in contrast to Thierry et al (2009) and Boutonnet et al (2013) who analyzed a task-irrelevant perceptual feature. This design allows us to inspect potential language-specific patterning of conditions within the P300 time window (as reported previously for complex language-perception interactions; Flecken et al, 2015), as well as for the N100 realm (reported for terminological differences; Boutonnet et al, 2013;Thierry et al, 2009), reflecting discriminatory processing, in addition to post-perceptual judgements in a separate behavioural task. The approach will provide insight into multiple levels of cognitive processing at which language effects may arise.…”