How do we perceive emoji?

Do we draw on sensory information when perceiving emoji? The short answer is, yes!

Team Emoji and I have been exploring how we perceive concepts represented in emoji based on different sensory modalities such as vision, smell, taste and so on. Our research is a replication of the Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms research led by our collaborator Dr Dermot Lynott, which gathered measures of sensorimotor strength for 39,707 concepts represented in English words. But instead, we are interested in emoji!

What are we finding so far?

Compared to perceptual strengths of word norms in the Lancaster study, there appears to be much lower strength via the visual modality for emoji than expected.

Interoceptive strength seems to be prominent for emoji. Interoception relates to our ability to interpret internal states of the body. This modality seems like it could be a route to abstract concept grounding within emoji, just like in words.

So far, the top emoji for interoceptive strength are 😥, ❤️, 💖, 🙁, 🥶, ♥️, 🤢, 🤮, 😂, 🥰, 🦠, 🌡, 🛏

This is interesting as many of these emoji can be ambiguous and in some cases, lack clear linguistic labels. So perhaps sensory affordances offer an alternative route to conceptual grounding of these concepts....?

If you want to contribute your data to help us further understand the fascinating world of emoji perception, you can do so here.