APA Dictionary of Psychology

the process of establishing and maintaining the correspondence between symbolic representations of objects and the actual physical objects in the real-world environment. For example, if a child is instructed to retrieve the green box from the shelf, they cannot do so properly unless able to associate the internal representation of the item conveyed by the concepts of “green” and “box” with the appropriate sensory experience actually associated with the physical object itself. Also called perceptual anchoring.