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Updated: May 11, 2026

Using Eye Movements Recorded in the Visual World Paradigm to Explore the Online Processing of Spoken Language
Published on: October 13, 2018
Seeing objects through the language glass
Bastien Boutonnet1, Benjamin Dering, Nestor Viñas-Guasch
1School of Psychology, Bangor University, Bangor, Gwynedd, UK. b.boutonnet@bangor.ac.uk
Abstract:
Recent streams of research support the Whorfian hypothesis according to which language affects one's 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.
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