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"Pexman, Penny M"
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Five mechanisms of sound symbolic association
Sound symbolism refers to an association between phonemes and stimuli containing particular perceptual and/or semantic elements (e.g., objects of a certain size or shape). Some of the best-known examples include the mil/mal effect (Sapir,
Journal of Experimental Psychology
,
12
, 225–239,
1929
) and the maluma/takete effect (
Köhler, 1929
). Interest in this topic has been on the rise within psychology, and studies have demonstrated that sound symbolic effects are relevant for many facets of cognition, including language, action, memory, and categorization. Sound symbolism also provides a mechanism by which words’ forms can have nonarbitrary, iconic relationships with their meanings. Although various proposals have been put forth for how phonetic features (both acoustic and articulatory) come to be associated with stimuli, there is as yet no generally agreed-upon explanation. We review five proposals: statistical co-occurrence between phonetic features and associated stimuli in the environment, a shared property among phonetic features and stimuli; neural factors; species-general, evolved associations; and patterns extracted from language. We identify a number of outstanding questions that need to be addressed on this topic and suggest next steps for the field.
Journal Article
Quantifying social semantics: An inclusive definition of socialness and ratings for 8388 English words
It has been proposed that social experience plays an important role in the grounding of concepts, and
socialness
has been proffered as a fundamental organisational principle underpinning semantic representation in the human brain. However, the empirical support for these hypotheses is limited by inconsistencies in the way socialness has been defined and measured. To further advance theory, the field must establish a clearer working definition, and research efforts could be facilitated by the availability of an extensive set of socialness ratings for individual concepts. Therefore, in the current work, we employed a novel and inclusive definition to test the extent to which socialness is reliably perceived as a broad construct, and we report socialness norms for over 8000 English words, including nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Our inclusive socialness measure shows good reliability and validity, and our analyses suggest that the socialness ratings capture aspects of word meaning which are distinct to those measured by other pertinent semantic constructs, including concreteness and emotional valence. Finally, in a series of regression analyses, we show for the first time that the socialness of a word's meaning explains unique variance in participant performance on lexical tasks. Our dataset of socialness norms has considerable item overlap with those used in both other lexical/semantic norms and in available behavioural mega-studies. They can help target testable predictions about brain and behaviour derived from multiple representation theories and neurobiological accounts of social semantics.
Journal Article
Sound symbolism shapes the English language: The maluma/takete effect in English nouns
Sound symbolism refers to associations between language sounds (i.e., phonemes) and perceptual and/or semantic features. One example is the maluma/takete effect: an association between certain phonemes (e.g., /m/, /u/) and roundness, and others (e.g., /k/, /ɪ/) and spikiness. While this association has been demonstrated in laboratory tasks with nonword stimuli, its presence in existing spoken language is unknown. Here we examined whether the maluma/takete effect is attested in English, across a broad sample of words. Best–worst judgments from 171 university students were used to quantify the shape of 1,757 objects, from spiky to round. We then examined whether the presence of certain phonemes in words predicted the shape of the objects to which they refer. We found evidence that phonemes associated with roundness are more common in words referring to round objects, and phonemes associated with spikiness are more common in words referring to spiky objects. This represents an instance of iconicity, and thus nonarbitrariness, in human language.
Journal Article
The Sound Symbolism of Names
A wealth of research demonstrates that certain language sounds seem to go better with certain kinds of targets (i.e., sound-symbolic associations). The most well-known example is the maluma-takete effect,in which nonwords such as maluma are judged as good matches for round shapes, whereas nonwords such as takete are judged as good matches for sharp shapes. Most of this research involves nonwords, but recent work has shown that sound symbolism has implications for real first names. On the basis of a name’s sound, individuals tend to pair the name with particular shapes and indicate that they prefer people with congruent pairings of name sound and face shape. Individuals also associate different kinds of personalities with given names on the basis of the sounds the names contain. Thus, sound symbolism is not limited to nonwords and can emerge even with words that have existing associations. Sound-symbolic associations may also occur with more abstract properties (e.g., personality traits). Thus, this work provides insight about mechanisms underlying sound-symbolic association.
Journal Article
What’s in a Name? Sound Symbolism and Gender in First Names
Although the arbitrariness of language has been considered one of its defining features, studies have demonstrated that certain phonemes tend to be associated with certain kinds of meaning. A well-known example is the Bouba/Kiki effect, in which nonwords like bouba are associated with round shapes while nonwords like kiki are associated with sharp shapes. These sound symbolic associations have thus far been limited to nonwords. Here we tested whether or not the Bouba/Kiki effect extends to existing lexical stimuli; in particular, real first names. We found that the roundness/sharpness of the phonemes in first names impacted whether the names were associated with round or sharp shapes in the form of character silhouettes (Experiments 1a and 1b). We also observed an association between femaleness and round shapes, and maleness and sharp shapes. We next investigated whether this association would extend to the features of language and found the proportion of round-sounding phonemes was related to name gender (Analysis of Category Norms). Finally, we investigated whether sound symbolic associations for first names would be observed for other abstract properties; in particular, personality traits (Experiment 2). We found that adjectives previously judged to be either descriptive of a figuratively 'round' or a 'sharp' personality were associated with names containing either round- or sharp-sounding phonemes, respectively. These results demonstrate that sound symbolic associations extend to existing lexical stimuli, providing a new example of non-arbitrary mappings between form and meaning.
Journal Article
The maluma/takete effect is late: No longitudinal evidence for shape sound symbolism in the first year
The maluma/takete effect refers to an association between certain language sounds (e.g., /m/ and /o/) and round shapes, and other language sounds (e.g., /t/ and /i/) and spiky shapes. This is an example of
sound symbolism
and stands in opposition to arbitrariness of language. It is still unknown when sensitivity to sound symbolism emerges. In the present series of studies, we first confirmed that the classic maluma/takete effect would be observed in adults using our novel 3-D object stimuli (Experiments 1a and 1b). We then conducted the first longitudinal test of the maluma/takete effect, testing infants at 4-, 8- and 12-months of age (Experiment 2). Sensitivity to sound symbolism was measured with a looking time preference task, in which infants were shown images of a round and a spiky 3-D object while hearing either a round- or spiky-sounding nonword. We did not detect a significant difference in looking time based on nonword type. We also collected a series of individual difference measures including measures of vocabulary, movement ability and babbling. Analyses of these measures revealed that 12-month olds who babbled more showed a greater sensitivity to sound symbolism. Finally, in Experiment 3, we had parents take home round or spiky 3-D printed objects, to present to 7- to 8-month-old infants paired with either congruent or incongruent nonwords. This language experience had no effect on subsequent measures of sound symbolism sensitivity. Taken together these studies demonstrate that sound symbolism is elusive in the first year, and shed light on the mechanisms that may contribute to its eventual emergence.
Journal Article
An investigation of iconic language development in four datasets
Iconic words imitate their meanings. Previous work has demonstrated that iconic words are more common in infants’ early speech, and in adults’ child-directed speech (e.g., Perry et al., 2015; 2018). This is consistent with the proposal that iconicity provides a benefit to word learning. Here we explored iconicity in four diverse language development datasets: a production corpus for infants and preschoolers (MacWhinney, 2000), comprehension data for school-aged children to young adults (Dale & O'Rourke, 1981), word frequency norms from educational texts for school aged children to young adults (Zeno et al., 1995), and a database of parent-reported infant word production (Frank et al., 2017). In all four analyses, we found that iconic words were more common at younger ages. We also explored how this relationship differed by syntactic class, finding only modest evidence for differences. Overall, the results suggest that, beyond infancy, iconicity is an important factor in language acquisition.
Journal Article
Context matters: How do task demands modulate the recruitment of sensorimotor information during language processing?
Many theories of semantic representation propose that simulations of sensorimotor experience contribute to language processing. This can be seen in the body-object interaction effect (BOI; how easily the human body can interact with a word’s referent). Words with high BOI ratings (e.g.,
ball
) are processed more quickly than words with low BOI ratings (e.g.,
cloud
) in various language tasks. This effect can be modulated by task demands. Previous research established that when asked to decide if a word is an object (entity condition), a BOI effect is observed, but when asked to decide if a word is an action (action condition), there is no BOI effect. It is unclear whether the null behavioral effect in the action condition reflects top-down modulation of task-relevant sensorimotor information or the absence of bottom-up activation of sensorimotor simulations. We investigated this question using EEG. In Experiment 1 we replicated the previous behavioral findings. In Experiment 2, 50 participants were assigned to either the entity or action conditions and responded to the same word stimuli. In both conditions we observed differences in ERP components related to the BOI effect. In the entity condition the P2 mean amplitude was significantly more positive for high compared to low BOI words. In the action condition the N400 peak latency was significantly later for high compared to low BOI words. Our findings suggest that BOI information is generated bottom-up regardless of task demands and modulated by top-down processes that recruit sensorimotor information relevant to the task decision.
Journal Article
Cognitive and Affective Theory of Mind and Relations With Executive Functioning in Middle Childhood
Theory of mind (ToM) refers to the ability to make inferences about mental states. Thus far, little research has examined ToM development in middle childhood. Importantly, recent studies have distinguished between making inferences about beliefs (cognitive ToM) and emotions (affective ToM). ToM has also been associated with executive functioning, though research on the differential relations between cognitive ToM and affective ToM and specific components of executive functioning is scarce. The current study examined advanced cognitive and affective ToM in 8- to 11-year-olds (N = 168). Working memory, inhibition, and set-shifting abilities were also assessed. Results showed that, in this age group, cognitive ToM increased significantly with age, and combined cognitive and affective ToM trendwise increased with age. All three domains of executive functioning (EF) showed age-related improvement. Inhibitory control and verbal IQ significantly predicted cognitive ToM, whereas verbal IQ predicted affective ToM. These results suggest that cognitive and affective components of ToM are distinguishable and may be differentially related to EF.
Journal Article