Instant Effects of Semantic Information on Visual Perception

Does our perception of an object change once we discover what function it serves? We showed human participants (n = 48, 31 female, 17 male) pictures of unfamiliar objects either together with keywords matching their function, leading to semantically informed perception, or together with non-matching keywords, resulting in uninformed perception. We measured event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate at which stages in the visual processing hierarchy these two types of object perception differed from one another. We found that semantically informed as compared to uninformed perception was associated with larger amplitudes in the N170 component (150-200 ms), reduced amplitudes in the N400 component (400-700 ms), and a late decrease in alpha/beta band power. When the same objects were presented once more without any information, the N400 and event-related power effects persisted, and we also observed enlarged amplitudes in the P1 component (100-150 ms) in response to objects for which semantically informed perception had taken place. Consistent with previous work, this suggests that obtaining semantic information about previously unfamiliar objects alters aspects of their lower-level visual perception (P1 component), higher-level visual perception (N170 component), and semantic processing (N400 component, event-related power). Our study is the first to show that such effects occur instantly after semantic information has been provided for the first time, without requiring extensive learning. Significance StatementThere has been a long-standing debate about whether or not higher-level cognitive capacities such as semantic knowledge can influence lower-level perceptual processing in a top-down fashion. Here we could show for the first time that information about the function of previously unfamiliar objects immediately influences cortical processing within less than 200 ms. Of note, this influence does not require training or experience with the objects and related semantic information. Therefore, our study is the first to show effects of cognition on perception while ruling out the possibility that prior knowledge merely acts by pre-activating or altering stored visual representations. Instead, this knowledge seems to alter perception online, thus providing a compelling case against the impenetrability of perception by cognition.