Labelling and Iconicity Facilitate Visual Perception and Categorisation

We investigated how the presence of linguistic labels, their iconicity and mode of presentation affect non-linguistic cognitive processing; focusing on learning and visual recognition of new semantic categories. Novel species of aliens that mimicked natural semantic categories were paired with iconic labels, non-iconic labels, or no labels across two tasks. In the Training task participants learnt to categorise the aliens, and we then used a Match to Sample design to test how this affects their rapid visual recognition. Results showed the presence of labels, their iconicity and online presentation significantly affect non-linguistic cognitive processing, leading to more rapid and accurate visual recognition of newly acquired semantic categories. We argue that this is due to iconicity exaggerating sensory expectations provided by linguistic labels, made more readily accessible by their online presentation. We also examine the implications that our results might have for the language evolution discussion.