Abstract

BASBAUM, Sérgio Roclaw et al. Perception and Language: Description of Ambiguous Figures by Undergraduate Biology Students. Estud. pesqui. psicol. [online]. 2012, vol.12, n.2, pp. 462-478. ISSN 1808-4281.

Departing from a Merleau-Pontyan concept of linguistic mediation of perception, we ran a cognitive experiment, having the goal of studying how the perception of ambiguous figures is expressed in verbal language. Two of the figures mix biological and technological forms, while the third mixes two biological forms. We asked a group of 120 undergraduate Biology students from State University of São Paulo (UNESP) to write about their perception of three ambiguous figures. We made an analysis of descriptive categories that appeared in the responses and used a qualitative method (Discourse of the Collective Subject) to reconstruct the main features of the linguistic expression of preceptual processes. In conclusion, we found in these processes a richness of meanings related to cultural factors.

Keywords : Perception; Language; Meaning; Ambiguity.

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