You might think that visual metaphors only speak to those who see. However, a new study relayed by the online media Iflscience demonstrates that words are enough to transmit images. Burning red, icy blue, fresh green and linked to nature: as many representations that even the blind people of birth use without ever having perceived a single color.
The study, conducted by psychologists from the University of Wisconsin in Madison and published in the journal Communications Psychology, is based on computer tools, including Chatgpt. The research team explored how certain colors are systematically associated with sensations or concepts. For this, psychologists have used lexical diving models, mathematical models analyzing the use of words in many texts.
To test their method, psychologists have confronted their results obtained from human responses, collected from showy and blind people. In the two groups of people, associations between colors and concepts like hot/cold, light/heavy or young/old, are very similar. One might think that the blind people are just influenced by what seers have been able to tell them since their birth, but that would not be at all the case, insist the authors.
These rapprochements would be rather explained by second -rate cooccurings, indirect ties between the words that the brain captures by dint of exposure to language. Thus, the words “red” and “hot” are often found in the same contexts. By dint of hearing these combinations, even a blind person will internalize the idea that red is linked to heat.
Language power
More unexpected associations have also been offered to participants, for example, yellow and concepts such as speed. And there again, the showing and blind people gave very close answers. “We show that these associations are actually integrated into the statistical structure of language”say psychologists.
This study reveals a fascinating ability of language to transmit sensory representations. Even when they seem to be linked to sight, visual metaphors are actually culturally shared collective constructions.
We can therefore know the visual world without ever having seen it, thanks to “Language, specifically its distributional structure, in which there is a rich reservoir of information on the perceptual world”conclude the authors.
