Language and Perceptionion. Video

1.

Language and Perception

2.

Illusionists use the power of language to trick our minds into perceiving their
actions as magic,

3.

• Language is a factor that can
affect how we perceive the world
and vice versa.

4.

VIDEO

5.

OVERVIEW
• 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.

6.

Meaning of language and perception
• DEFINITION
• Perception is the
processing of information
we receive from our
senses.

7.

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.

8.

Examples of How Perception Affects Language
• Language and perception involve activity from different
cognitive systems that work together.
• EXAMPLE: 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.

9.

Test your knowledge with multiple choice
• What type of design was used in Carmichael,
Hogan and Walter's (1932) study?
1. Matched Pairs Design
2. Independent Group Design
3. Repeated Measures Design

10.

A.
• B. Independent Group Design

11.

Q.
• Can the development of perceptual abilities facilitate
developing language skills?
• No.
• Yes.

12.

A.
• Yes.

13.

Q.
• Did Carmichael, Hogan and Walter (1932) conclude that
language affects perception?
• No.
• Yes.

14.

A.
• Yes.

15.

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

16.

EXAMPLE
• 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.

17.

Research on the Language and Perception Relationship
• 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.

18.

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).

19.

• 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.

20.

• 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'.

21.

Carmichael, Hogan and Walter (1932) used ambiguous
figures to identify if verbal labels affected perception
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.

22.

Language and perception: Carmichael, Hogan and Walter's
(1932) results
• 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.

23.

Language and perception: Carmichael, Hogan and Walter's
(1932) evaluation
• 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

24.

• 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.

25.

Language and Perception
• 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