Sensory Psycholinguistics

By Norbert Vanek

Are words special in shaping how we perceive the world, or can nonverbal cues such as shape, colour or sound activate knowledge about sensory perceptions in similar ways? A growing body of psycholinguistic research suggests that language labels provide a uniquely powerful boost to perception, supporting discrimination, pattern recognition and category learning across complex multisensory input types. This Element surveys recent advances in sensory psycholinguistics, the study of how language influences perception through vision, hearing, touch, smell and taste. It introduces core concepts, reviews landmark experiments across each sensory modality and contextualises innovative methods together with a variety of related measures. Designed for both new and experienced researchers, the Element invites critical reflection on how linguistic cues influence perceptual processing and meaning-making. The five senses are examined in a reversed hierarchical order (smell, taste, touch, hearing, vision) to underscore that commonly assumed sensory hierarchies are neither universal nor cross-culturally uniform.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1009728032
• ISBN13: 9781009728034
• Release Date: November 2026
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 75 Pages