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Verbal Labels Reshape Perceptual Representations and Account for Linguistic Relativity: Behavioral and Neural Evidence for Enhanced Neuronal Distinction via Cross-Modal Cell Assembly Formation
Poster Session D, Thursday, October 1, 4:30 - 6:30 pm, Wangari Maathai
Tally McCormick Miller1, Friedemann Pulvermüller1,2,3; 1Brain Language Laboratory, Department of Philosophy and Humanities, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany, 2erlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany, 3Einstein Center for Neurosciences Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Linguistic relativity — the claim that language shapes thought and perception — has long been debated, but causal evidence remains elusive. Cross-linguistic studies are plagued by cultural confounds and between-group variability, while reliance on reaction time measures conflates perceptual and decisional processes. Here we present a theoretical framework, the Enhanced Neuronal Distinction (END) theory, that offers the first neurobiologically grounded mechanistic account of how language causally reshapes perceptual representations — and addresses longstanding puzzles in the linguistic relativity literature that have resisted explanation. END proposes that consistent pairing of verbal labels with perceptual stimuli drives Hebbian plasticity between phonological and sensory networks, enlarging cross-modal cell assemblies and reducing proportional representational overlap between confusable percepts. Crucially, this mechanism does not eliminate sensory similarity, but renders it functionally negligible within expanded assemblies — effectively creating discriminability where none previously existed. Because this process operates at the level of distributed neural circuits rather than online working memory, END makes a distinctive prediction: verbal interference tasks, which disrupt active phonological processes, should suppress or erase linguistic relativity behavioral effects, whereas general working memory load should leave them intact. This pattern has been documented in the literature but has lacked a satisfying mechanistic explanation; END accounts for it naturally. Empirical support for END comes from a series of tightly controlled within-subject experiments pairing novel pseudowords with novel vibro-tactile patterns — a design that eliminates cultural confounds, linguistic familiarity effects, and between-group variability while measuring discrimination accuracy rather than response latency. Results showed that concordant pseudoword-percept pairings produced significant improvements in discrimination accuracy, whereas discordant pairings, perceptual exposure alone, and pairing with matched musical tone sequences did not. The specificity to verbal labels — not auditory stimuli in general — points to the distinctive architecture of phonological networks as the critical ingredient. Neuroimaging data further revealed post-training increases in functional connectivity between bilateral auditory cortices, left secondary somatosensory cortex, and bilateral hippocampi for concordantly paired stimuli, consistent with Hebbian circuit formation underlying the behavioral effects. Together, these findings establish END as a framework that bridges behavioral demonstrations of linguistic relativity with biologically plausible neural mechanisms — offering not only an account of how language creates new perceptual distinctions, but a principled explanation for the fragility and boundary conditions of linguistic relativity effects more broadly.
Topic Areas: Language Development/Acquisition, Speech Perception