Cross-modal mapping of perceptual dimensions

Is "Dark" similar to "Big" or "Small"? Is "Thick" similar to "High pitch" or "Low pitch" tone? How does one's language affect the structure of perceptual relations and how does this structure change throughout the development?

These are the questions that we are currently investigating in this project. In particular we are looking at the interaction of language and cross-modal perceptual similarities.

We are interested to learn about the structure of perceptual dimensions across cultures and languages. Dimensions that are described more similarly across language such as Size (e.g with adjectives Big and Small in English) are compared with other dimensions that do not seem to have one way of being described (such as Pitch, Thickness, Darkness, etc.). The goal of the project is to investigate whether and how perceptual dimensions are mapped across different modalities and across different languages.

Researchers

• Melissa Bowerman
• Asifa Majid
• Ozge Ozturk
• Shakila Shayan

Contact Persons

Shakila Shayan and Ozge Ozturk

Categorical colour perception in pre-linguistic infants

Although the colour spectrum is continuous, it is perceived as a number of discrete categories. Languages differ in how they draw boundaries for different colour categories. Whether or not the language we speak affects our perception and categorization of colour is an old yet unanswered question.

One way of exploring the origin and nature of colour categories is to study subjects' colour discrimination abilities, and compare these abilities for colours that are equivalently spaced on the colour spectrum but cross a category boundary. If subjects in such tasks can discriminate the within-category colours easier than the between category colours, then they have shown a categorical colour perception.

The Linguistic relativity theory would predict cross-cultural differences in categorical perception. The Universalist theory on the other hand would support a more or less similar categorical perception across languages and cultures. In this project we are investigating whether pre-linguistic infants show categorical perception across a range of colours. Colours that are placed in different categories across languages are of particular interest. We are investigating if infants' categorical perception varies as the colour range and the colour boundary varies. We are also exploring if and how learning colour terms affects children's colour memory and categorization over development.

Researchers

• Ulf Liszkowski
• Asifa Majid
• Ozge Ozturk
• Shakila Shayan

External collaborator

• Debi Roberson

Contact Persons

Ozge Ozturk and Shakila Shayan