Effects of lexical ambiguity on perception: A test of the label feedback hypothesis using a visual oddball paradigm

We used a visual oddball paradigm to investigate whether a shared verbal label makes two objects belonging to different conceptual categories less perceptually distinct. In Experiment 1, the critical images shared a label as well as some perceptual features (orange, referring to the color and the fruit), and in Experiment 2, the critical images shared a label but no perceptual features (bat, referring to the animal and the sports equipment). In both experiments comparison images were similar to each of the critical images but they did not share a label. A reduced deviant-related negativity (DRN) was observed for critical images compared with comparison images in both experiments, suggesting that the critical image pairs were perceived as less distinct than comparison pairs. These results extend previous research using the visual oddball paradigm that has shown that images from the same conceptual category are perceived as more distinct when they have different labels, and provide further support for the label-feedback hypothesis (Lupyan, 2012) in which language is assumed to modulate perception online. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).