Why do we describe blueberries as blue as opposed to white (their inside color)? People might label object colors entirelyaccording to what they see most frequently. We hypothesized instead that labeling takes into account typical viewingconditions (outside/daytime) and object causal history (colors relationship to function; Cohen, 2004). We further predictedthat these intuitions develop independently of visual experience. Sighted (n=15) and congenitally blind (n=20) participantschose one of two color labels for novel objects, described as having different colors (or textures) on the inside/outsideor during daylight/nighttime. On some day/night trials, objects had nighttime-intended functions. Sighted and blindindividuals alike chose observer-centric outside and day colors by default, but switched to nighttime colors when objectshad nighttime functions. First-person visual experience is not required for color-labeling to take into account observercharacteristics and object causal history.

A key characteristic of color perception is that it both categorical and continuous. This is reflected in graded color ad-jective use. This red fruit is redder than the other red fruit sounds more natural than this red fruit is redder than the bluefruit (Kennedy & McNally, 2010). We examined the contribution of first-person sensory experience to color gradabilityunderstanding by working with congenitally blind adults. Blind (n=20) and sighted (n=15) adults rated the naturalness ofstatements describing two objects of the same color (two red mugs), dissimilar colors (red mug, blue mug) or similar col-ors (red mug, purple mug). Both groups judged redder as most natural for two red objects, least for objects with differentcolors (red/blue) and intermediate for objects with similar colors (red/purple). Color similarity had a larger effect for thesighted group. Understanding color gradability does not require first-person perception.

Our remarkable ability to infer complex cause-effect relationships is thought to distinguish humans from all other species. Despite that causal inferencing pervades human cognition, it remains unclear whether this fundamental cognitive ability is supported by a unified, domain-general mechanism or multiple domain-specific mechanisms. Both the language and logical reasoning systems have been described as possible unified substrates of causal inferencing. The current study uses neuroimaging to offer insight into this debate. We specifically focus on the culturally universal and highly motivationally relevant case of inferring illness causes. Participants read causal and noncausal vignettes about illness and mechanical failure while undergoing fMRI. We find that inferring the causes of illness selectively activates the brain's ‘animacy network,' particularly the precuneus. By contrast, a domain-general (i.e., ‘content-invariant') preference for causal inferencing did not emerge, including in the language and logical reasoning networks. Together, this evidence suggests that domain-specific mechanisms enable causal inferencing.

Do we need to reflect on our own perceptual experiences to understand what another person is seeing/hearing? Sighted(n=18) and congenitally blind (n=18) participants listened to scenarios describing sighted or blind observers looking at orhearing another person (target). Participants rated the likelihood that observers would know features of the target (e.g., age,gender, eye/hair color). We manipulated distance of observer from the target (nearby versus far) and duration of perceptualexperience (extended versus brief). Blind and sighted groups agreed on features easiest to discern (e.g. hair easier than eyecolor), although blind participants judgments about vision were more variable. Both groups judged nearby and extendedperception more likely to result in knowing. For seeing experiences, blind participants judgments were more influenced byduration, whereas sighted participants by distance. Linguistic communication is sufficient for discovering basic variablesgoverning perception (i.e., distance, duration), but first-person experience calibrates weighting of the variables.

Comparison of visibility inferences across congenitally blind and sighted people provides insight into the contribution of first-person sensory experience to intuitive theories. We hypothesized that both groups understand others' visual experiences via an intuitive theory incorporating variables known to influence visual psychophysics (distance, looking duration, and feature size). Adults born blind (n=20) and sighted (n=40) listened to short scenarios that described an observer looking at another person from different distances and for varying durations. Participants rated how likely the observer would perceive appearance features of the person that varied in size (e.g., eye color vs. hat). A probabilistic formalization of intuitive visibility fit the ratings with high accuracy across scenarios and features. Model parameters were qualitatively identical across groups but blind adults weighted distance and size less. A quantitative and generative intuitive theory of vision develops without first-person sensory access, possibly through linguistic communication, and is fine-tuned by visual experience.

Measurement of braille reading with high spatial and temporal accuracy could provide a unique window into incremental processing, complementary to eye tracking and speech perception measures. In braille reading, the fingers move continuously (not in discrete saccades) and perceptual processing is focal (unaffected by parafoveal preview or anticipatory coarticulation). We video-recorded (~60fps) nine congenitally blind adults reading linguistically rich passages from the Natural Stories Corpus presented in UEB English braille. Finger locations were tracked with computer vision software, mapped to page coordinates, and converted to word reading times (RTs). In the resulting dense data set, containing >3 million tracked locations and >50,000 word tokens, RTs increased with word length in cells (r=0.77), decreased with log word frequency (r=–0.62), and increased with context-based surprisal (r=0.40, all ps<0.001). These results establish lexical and contextual effects with a low-cost, automatic braille tracking method.

Trained on text only, Large Language Models (LLMs) provide a unique way to approach the age-old question of how language captures sensory experiences. Such models have showcased human-level performance in several domains. However, what they capture about the sensory world remains uncertain. We prompted state-of-the-art LLMs (GPT-3.5 and GPT-4) as well as sighted and congenitally blind adults to judge the likelihood of successful visual and auditory perception using verbal scenarios. Scenarios varied in distance of the observer from the object (next to, across the street, a block away), duration of perception (glance vs. stare) and properties of perceived object (e.g., size for vision). Sighted and blind humans produced highly consistent perceptibility judgments, and these correlated highly with GPT-3.5 and GPT-4. GPT-4 showed human-like effects of size, distance, and duration, though both LLMs underestimated humans' ability to perceive. Language captures detailed quantitative information about perceptibility.

Locke argued that persons born blind do not possess true knowledge about color. While prior studies find some knowledgeof color among blind individuals, questions remain about the depth of this knowledge. Do blind individuals merely learninferentially shallow verbal associations (e.g., bananayellow)? We hypothesized instead that blind individuals are morelikely to acquire causally-relevant color information. Blind (n=20) and sighted adults (n=20) reported colors of naturalkinds (e.g. banana) and artifacts (e.g. car) and judged the likelihood that two instances of a type have the same color.Relative to the sighted, blind participants were less likely to know specific object colors (e.g. banana-yellow), but madeidentical inferences about color consistency (more consistent colors for natural kinds). Inferences were similar acrossgroups even for novel objects. Further, blind individuals gave detailed and coherent causal explanations of color origins.Inferentially rich knowledge of sensory categories can develop without first-person experience.