Translating From Perceptual to Cognitive Coding

An important question in cognitive science is how conceptual knowledge interacts with perception. For example, how does knowing that trucks have wheels and windshields impact a person's recognition of a truck? Through a series of categorization tasks, we explore two pathways by which humans can learn to identify objects. One pathway involves the acquisition of perceptual expertise through extensive taskrelevant experience, and leads to the rapid identification of individual stimuli. A second pathway involves a translation process in which percepts of objects are encoded into symbolic descriptions. The use of this pathway results in a similar ability to identify individual stimuli, but requires more time to operate due to the demands of the online translation process. These results are discussed in terms of related work in categorization, perceptual expertise, and influence of language on thought.