Visual Intuitions in Blind People: The Role of Direct Sensory Experience on Concreteness and Imageability Ratings

The strongest formulations of grounded cognition assume that perceptual intuitions about concepts necessarily require the re-activation of sensory experience we have made with their referents. Here we tested such an assumption by asking whether visual intuitions about concepts can still be accurately formed in the absence of direct visual experience. To this aim, we exploited Flickr Image, a photo-sharing platform, to extract a data-driven estimate of concepts’ visual experientiability (i.e. the availability of their visual representation in the world) and then tested whether this estimate could predict concreteness and imageability intuitions in blind people. Our results demonstrated that even when direct experience is missing, the visual properties of word referents can still be predicted by their level of visual experientiability in the world. Thus, direct visual experience with objects does not seem to be critical in making them concrete and imageable in a person's intuitions. Instead, our findings support the notion that perceptual judgments are shaped by high-level conceptual knowledge, which may not necessarily be derived from direct perceptual experience.