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Updated: Jun 6, 2026
07:31
Defining the Role Of Language in Infants' Object Categorization with Eye-tracking Paradigms
Published on: February 8, 2019
Redundant spoken labels facilitate perception of multiple items
Gary Lupyan1, Michael J Spivey
1Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, 1202 W. Johnson St., Madison, WI 53706, USA. lupyan@wisc.edu
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics
|November 25, 2010
Summary
Hearing object labels, even when redundant, speeds up visual processing and improves accuracy in locating named items. This linguistic effect enhances visual attention through top-down feedback mechanisms.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Linguistics
Background:
- Verbal labels strongly associate with visual objects.
- Hearing a word can guide visual attention to named objects.
Purpose of the Study:
- Investigate how redundant object labels affect visual processing.
- Determine if hearing a label enhances visual processing of multiple objects.
Main Methods:
- Six experiments were conducted using object labels and visual stimuli.
- Participants detected attention probes near named objects.
- Stimulus typicality and label-object association were manipulated.
Main Results:
- Hearing noninformative object labels facilitated faster detection of attention probes.
- This facilitation was mediated by stimulus typicality.
- Hearing labels improved accuracy in locating multiple matching items, even with restricted eye movements.
Conclusions:
- Verbal labels dynamically modulate visual processing via top-down feedback.
- Linguistic labels enhance perception by 'greasing the wheels' of visual processing.
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