The present study tested the hypothesis that the nature of verbal labels associated with stimuli influences the subsequent perception of those stimuli. 48 children were given differential verbal training to associate nonsense syllables with 4 highly similar visual forms. One group learned common labels; another, distinctive labels; and a 3rd, no labels. Following verbal training, perceptual and discrimination learning tasks were administered to all Ss. Children who had associated common, as opposed to distinctive, labels to 2 stimuli perceived the stimuli as identical significantly more often and exhibited greater difficulty in learning to discriminate between them. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)