Dr. Lupyan’s main interest in perception is studying how knowledge, expectations, and task demands influence visual perception. A main focus is on how language impacts moment-to-moment perceptual processing, for example examining how hearing a word can make an invisible image visible, how knowledge of what color something is can impact color appearance, and how a meaningful word can look sharper than a meaningless word. He also studies the extent to which human cognition is influenced by experience with and use of language, and questions surrounding the origin and evolution of language.