We investigated how the presence of linguistic labels, their iconicity and mode of presentation (cued vs not cued) affect non-linguistic cognitive processing, focussing on the learning and visual discrimination of new categories. Novel species of aliens that mimicked natural categories were paired with iconic labels, non-iconic labels or no labels across two tasks. In the Training task participants learnt to categorise the aliens, with results showing that both labels and iconicity improved categorisation. We then used a Match to Sample task to test how these variables affect rapid visual discrimination. Results showed that the presence of labels, their iconicity and label cueing all lead to more rapid and accurate visual discrimination of newly acquired categories. We argue that this is due to iconicity exaggerating sensory expectations provided by linguistic labels, made more readily accessible by cueing. We also examine the possible implications of our results for the discussion about language evolution.
