Some infamous illusionists you may have heard of include the names, Houdini and Derren Brown. To those not in on their tricks, they manage to do the impossible. Many illusionist tricks work by affecting how we perceive things and playing on the brain's failsafe way of making sense of the world when reality appears to not be how it seems.
Language is a factor that can affect how we perceive the world and vice versa. When Derren Brown does readings, he uses the power of language to influence our perception. Let's take a look at the relationship between language and perception.
- We will start by looking at the meaning of language and perception.
- To ensure your understanding of the topic, we will look at examples of how language affects perception and perception affects language development.
- Moving on, we will look at research investigating the language and perception research carried out by Carmichael, Hogan and Walter (1932). The study will help us learn the proposed language and perception theory and how they investigated this.
Illusionists use the power of language to trick our minds into perceiving their actions as magic, freepik.com/pch.vector.
Meaning of language and perception
Perception is the processing of information we receive from our senses.
Perceptual information that is processed comes from our five senses, freepik.com/macrovector.
Various factors affect how we perceive information, such as:
- Schemas; schemas are organised mental frameworks of memories and learned information that we use to make sense of the world.
- Personality: what you choose to focus on and interact with is affected by your personality and personal choices
- Language: we use language to express our thoughts and feelings to help ourselves and others understand what we are trying to communicate.
Examples of How Perception Affects Language
Language and perception involve activity from different cognitive systems that work together.
Perception affects language, e.g. if you saw a person walking a dog and you recounted the story to a friend, you would tell the story using the past tense.
In addition, when we want to relay information regarding what we perceive, e.g. see, smell, hear, taste and touch, we need to use language to express it to others.
Perception Effects on Language Development
From the descriptions, it is clear that both language and perception are essential cognitive systems. Let's look at how perception affects language development to determine its importance.
During the early stages of development, children can make noises that are not meaningful. Over time as children develop, their cognitive processes such as perception develop, and so does their ability to communicate more complicated topics. Parents can facilitate language learning.
When a child is born, they learn to babble over time, which doesn't mean much as they explore the sounds they can make.
As their perceptual skills develop, the infant may realise that their mother says 'mum' and points at herself. The child will try to imitate the sound and eventually learn how to pronounce the word and know what the meaning is.
Research on the Language and Perception Relationship
Let's take a look at research that investigated the language and perception relationship by Carmichael, Hogan and Walter (1932).
Language and Perception Theory (Carmichael, Hogan & Walter, 1932)
The research aimed to identify whether verbal labels and images of ambiguous figures shown together affected participants' perception and how they remembered and described the pictures later on.
Language and perception: Carmichael, Hogan and Walter's (1932) procedure
The study recruited 95 college students and teachers in a lab setting. The study involved splitting participants into three groups:
- Group 1 - heard verbal labels from list one with the pictures.
- Group 2 - heard verbal labels from list two with the pictures.
- Group 3 - shown pictures only with no verbal labels (9 participants).
The study used an independent group design meaning all participants saw the same pictures (12 in total).
The study involved presenting ambiguous figures. Ambiguous figures are a form of illusion which causes people to see different things based on their perceptions. The figures could typically be either of two options, and each choice was given in each word list.
Some examples of ambiguous figures and the word lists used in the study are:
- The image shown could be seen as either glasses or dumbells, and group one would hear the word 'eyeglasses' before the image from word list 1. Group two would hear the word 'dumbbells' before seeing the image from word list 2.
- Another example can be the shape or a crescent moon which can be seen as the letter 'C'. Word list 1 - crescent moon; Word list 2 - letter 'C'.
Instructions included that after seeing all 12 figures in no particular order, each figure should be drawn again from memory.
Remember, the control group did not get verbal labels.
The independent variable was whether participants were told a verbal label from list one or two. And the dependent variable was whether the figure imitated matched the verbal label described by the researcher.
Carmichael, Hogan and Walter (1932) used ambiguous figures to identify if verbal labels affected perception, StudySmarter Original; created in Canva.
If participants could not reproduce all 12 figures, they were shown all of the images again and asked to draw each. The pictures did not have to be exact but recognisable. The experiment was repeated until they were able to do so.
Language and perception: Carmichael, Hogan and Walter's (1932) results
The table below summarises how on average, each group performed.
Group | % of drawings that resembled words given in corresponding lists |
1 | 74 |
2 | 73 |
Control | 45 |
Language and perception: Carmichael, Hogan and Walter's (1932) conclusion
As there was a dramatic difference between the results of participants who did and did not receive a verbal label, it is safe to assume that language affects the memory of the figures.
From the results, we can derive that memory of ambiguous figures is reconstructed in context to the verbal labels. Thus, we are more likely to recall an ambiguous figure to look like how we perceive it in terms of the verbal label.
In group 1, participants are more likely to draw one of the figures to look like a crescent moon, and the other group is more likely to draw it similar to the letter 'C'.
Language and perception: Carmichael, Hogan and Walter's (1932) evaluation
Let's now look at the study's strengths and weaknesses!
Strengths
The study's strength is that it was conducted in a lab setting. This advantage is that the researcher has high control of confounding variables that may affect the research and reduce its validity.
Another strength of the study was that the imitated pictures were quality checked by two researchers. If the two researchers could not decide on the quality of the pictures, then a third researcher was called in. The multiple researchers checking means that the study's results have high internal reliability.
High internal reliability means that the study consistently measures what it intends to, i.e. whether both agreed that the imitated figures matched the words.
The study also used a control group to compare the results to the experimental groups. The strength of this is that it allowed the researchers to identify how verbal labels versus no verbal labels affected perception.
Weaknesses
However, the weaknesses of the study are that as it was carried out in a lab, it lacked ecological validity. The issue with the artificial setting is that it may cause the participants to act unnaturally and lowers the study's validity.
Moreover, the study can be criticised for not being practical as the study used ambiguous figures which we do not typically see in our everyday life. Would similar results be found if the study investigated how language affected perception using common standard materials? So, how useful is this study?
Language and Perception - Key takeaways
- Language and perception are two different cognitive systems that work together.
- Carmichael, Hogan and Walter researched the relationship between language and perception in 1932.
- The study by Carmichael, Hogan and Walter (1932) compared whether people given a specific descriptor of an ambiguous figure were more likely to draw the picture of the descriptive rather than the ambiguous figure at recall.
- Carmichael, Hogan and Walter (1932) concluded that the memory of ambiguous figures is reconstructed in context to the verbal labels. Thus, language affects our perception.
References
- Carmichael, L., Hogan, H. P., & Walter, A. A. (1932). An experimental study of the effect of language on the reproduction of visually perceived from. Journal of Experimental Psychology. 15(1), 73-86.
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