Conceptual representation of real‐world surface material: Early integration with linguistic‐labels indicated in the N400‐component

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Abstract
Research in perception in the visual and auditory domains has traditionally focused on investigating highly controlled artificial stimulus material. However, a key feature of our perceptual system is the ease with which the input of a wide set of naturalistic co‐occurring information is dealt with. This study investigated whether, during perception of real‐world surface material, a conceptual representation is built that has the potential to interact with a linguistic description of the material directly. Short sentences were presented (e.g., This surface is smooth) followed by a matching or mismatching picture of a real‐world surface material. The results showed early cross‐modal integration effects during material surface perception in an N400‐like potential, originating approximately 280 ms after stimulus presentation. Overall, these findings suggest a rather early influence of linguistic information on material perception, suggesting that in line with object representation, real‐world materials are represented in the brain in a format that allows interaction with non‐visual information.
Funding Information
  • Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DU 1505/4‐1)

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