Short-term trained lexical categories produce preattentive categorical perception of color: evidence from ERPs

The present study investigated whether short-term trained lexical categories could produce lateralized preattentive categorical perception (CP) of color. Participants' event-related potentials were recorded while performing a visual oddball task in which standard and deviant colored stimuli from the same or different novel lexical categories were presented. Two groups of participants were recruited: a group trained on these novel categories (n = 26), and an untrained control group (n = 26). Results of paired t tests showed that deviants did not evoke significant visual mismatch negativity, with the exception of deviants from different novel categories presented in the right visual field of the training group. This suggests that short-term trained lexical categories produce lateralized preattentive color CP, and language enhances sensitivity to the differences among between-category stimuli.