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Schmidtke D, Conrad M. The role of valence and arousal for phonological iconicity in the lexicon of German: a cross-validation study using pseudoword ratings. Cogn Emot 2024:1-22. [PMID: 38773881 DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2024.2353775] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/07/2023] [Accepted: 05/05/2024] [Indexed: 05/24/2024]
Abstract
The notion of sound symbolism receives increasing interest in psycholinguistics. Recent research - including empirical effects of affective phonological iconicity on language processing (Adelman et al., 2018; Conrad et al., 2022) - suggested language codes affective meaning at a basic phonological level using specific phonemes as sublexical markers of emotion. Here, in a series of 8 rating-experiments, we investigate the sensitivity of language users to assumed affectively-iconic systematic distribution patterns of phonemes across the German vocabulary:After computing sublexical-affective-values (SAV) concerning valence and arousal for the entire German phoneme inventory according to occurrences of syllabic onsets, nuclei and codas in a large-scale affective normative lexical database, we constructed pseudoword material differing in SAV to test for subjective affective impressions.Results support affective iconicity as affective ratings mirrored sound-to-meaning correspondences in the lexical database. Varying SAV of otherwise semantically meaningless pseudowords altered affective impressions: Higher arousal was consistently assigned to pseudowords made of syllabic constituents more often used in high-arousal words - contrasted by less straightforward effects of valence SAV. Further disentangling specific differential effects of the two highly-related affective dimensions valence and arousal, our data clearly suggest arousal, rather than valence, as the relevant dimension driving affective iconicity effects.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Markus Conrad
- Psychology, Universidad de La Laguna, San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Spain
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de Zubicaray GI, Hinojosa JA. Statistical Relationships Between Phonological Form, Emotional Valence and Arousal of Spanish Words. J Cogn 2024; 7:42. [PMID: 38737820 PMCID: PMC11086587 DOI: 10.5334/joc.366] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/15/2024] [Accepted: 04/23/2024] [Indexed: 05/14/2024] Open
Abstract
A number of studies have provided evidence of limited non-arbitrary associations between the phonological forms and meanings of affective words, a finding referred to as affective sound symbolism. Here, we explored whether the affective connotations of Spanish words might have more extensive statistical relationships with phonological/phonetic features, or affective form typicality. After eliminating words with poor affective rating agreement and morphophonological redundancies (e.g., negating prefixes), we found evidence of significant form typicality for emotional valence, emotionality, and arousal in a large sample of monosyllabic and polysyllabic words. These affective form-meaning mappings remained significant even when controlling for a range of lexico-semantic variables. We show that affective variables and their corresponding form typicality measures are able to significantly predict lexical decision performance using a megastudy dataset. Overall, our findings provide new evidence that affective form typicality is a statistical property of the Spanish lexicon.
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Affiliation(s)
- Greig I. de Zubicaray
- School of Psychology and Counselling, Faculty of Health, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia
| | - José A. Hinojosa
- Departamento de Psicología Experimental, Procesos Cognitivos y Logopedia, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
- Instituto Pluridisciplinar, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
- Centro de Investigación Nebrija en Cognición (CINC), Universidad Nebrija, Madrid, Spain
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Calvillo-Torres R, Haro J, Ferré P, Poch C, Hinojosa JA. Sound symbolic associations in Spanish emotional words: affective dimensions and discrete emotions. Cogn Emot 2024:1-17. [PMID: 38660751 DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2024.2345377] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/07/2023] [Accepted: 04/16/2024] [Indexed: 04/26/2024]
Abstract
Sound symbolism refers to non-arbitrary associations between word forms and meaning, such as those observed for some properties of sounds and size or shape. Recent evidence suggests that these connections extend to emotional concepts. Here we investigated two types of non-arbitrary relationships. Study 1 examined whether iconicity scores (i.e. resemblance-based mapping between aspects of a word's form and its meaning) for words can be predicted from ratings in the affective dimensions of valence and arousal and/or the discrete emotions of happiness, anger, fear, disgust and sadness. Words denoting negative concepts were more likely to have more iconic word forms. Study 2 explored whether statistical regularities in single phonemes (i.e. systematicity) predicted ratings in affective dimensions and/or discrete emotions. Voiceless (/p/, /t/) and voiced plosives (/b/, /d/, /g/) were related to high arousing words, whereas high arousing negative words tended to include fricatives (/s/, /z/). Hissing consonants were also more likely to occur in words denoting all negative discrete emotions. Additionally, words conveying certain discrete emotions included specific phonemes. Overall, our data suggest that emotional features might explain variations in iconicity and provide new insight about phonemic patterns showing sound symbolic associations with the affective properties of words.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rocío Calvillo-Torres
- Departamento de Psicología Experimental, Procesos Cognitivos y Logopedia, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
| | - Juan Haro
- Departament de Psicologia and CRAMC, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain
| | - Pilar Ferré
- Departament de Psicologia and CRAMC, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain
| | - Claudia Poch
- Centro de Investigación Nebrija en Cognición (CINC), Universidad Nebrija, Madrid, Spain
- Departamento de Educación, Universidad de Nebrija, Madrid, Spain
| | - José A Hinojosa
- Departamento de Psicología Experimental, Procesos Cognitivos y Logopedia, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
- Centro de Investigación Nebrija en Cognición (CINC), Universidad Nebrija, Madrid, Spain
- Instituto Pluridisciplinar, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
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Ando M, Kambara T. Japanese written pseudowords can be conditioned to Japanese spoken words with positive, negative, and active emotions. Cogn Process 2023; 24:387-413. [PMID: 37450232 PMCID: PMC10787689 DOI: 10.1007/s10339-023-01138-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/16/2022] [Accepted: 04/12/2023] [Indexed: 07/18/2023]
Abstract
This study aimed to examine whether Japanese participants condition spoken words' meanings to written pseudowords. In Survey 1, we selected spoken words associated with negative (α = .91) and positive (α = .79) features for Experiment 1 and passive (α = .90) and active (α = .80) features for Experiment 2. In Experiment 1, participants evaluated four written pseudowords' emotional valence using a 7-point semantic differential scale (1: negative; 7: positive) before and after conditioning spoken words with negative, neutral, or positive features to each pseudoword. In the conditioning phase, participants read each pseudoword, listened to a spoken word, and verbally repeated each spoken word. The results showed that a pseudoword was conditioned to spoken words with positive and negative features. In Experiment 2, participants evaluated four pseudowords' activeness using a 7-point semantic differential scale (1: passive; 7: active) before and after conditioning spoken words of passive, neutral, and active features to each written pseudoword. In the conditioning phase, the participants read each written pseudoword, listened to a spoken word, and repeated the spoken word. The results showed that the activeness evaluations were more increased for pseudowords conditioned to spoken words of active and neutral features after conditioning than before conditioning but were unchanged for a pseudoword conditioned to those with passive features before and after conditioning. Additonally, Survey 2's results showed that although the positiveness and activeness responses of the words used in Experiments 1 and 2 were controlled well, the lack of significant differences among positiveness responses of words may influence the evaluative conditioning in Experiment 2. That is, when participants condition passive (low arousal) words' activeness (arousal) ratings to those of pseudowords, words' positiveness (valence) ratings would be important in the evaluative conditioning. Our findings suggest that participants can condition spoken word meanings of preference and activeness to those of written pseudowords. It also indicates that linguistically evaluative conditioning's effects are robust in a non-alphabetic language.
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Affiliation(s)
- Misa Ando
- Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Hiroshima University, Higashihiroshima, Japan
| | - Toshimune Kambara
- Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Hiroshima University, Higashihiroshima, Japan.
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Yan Y, Yang Y, Ando M, Liu X, Kambara T. Multisensory Connections of Novel Linguistic Stimuli in Japanese as a Native Language and Referential Tastes. Eur J Investig Health Psychol Educ 2021; 11:999-1010. [PMID: 34563087 PMCID: PMC8544189 DOI: 10.3390/ejihpe11030074] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/26/2021] [Revised: 08/25/2021] [Accepted: 08/27/2021] [Indexed: 11/23/2022] Open
Abstract
Previous findings have shown essential connections between linguistic and gustatory stimuli for people with autism or lexical gustatory synesthesia. We examined the associative learning of novel linguistic forms in Japanese as a native language and tastes (candies and chocolates) for healthy people. Healthy subjects performed four phases: (a) evaluation phase of gustatory features; (b) learning phases of novel linguistic form and gustatory stimulus pairs (G) or novel word forms (W); (c) recognition memory phases linked with G and W; and (d) free recall phase for G and W. In the recognition memory phases, the performance scores of W were higher than those of G, while there was no significant difference between response times of G and W. Additionally, no difference between recall performances in G and W was also shown. A subjective evaluation of gustatory features (sweetness) negatively correlated with the recall score for linguistic forms connected to the gustatory feature, whereas the accuracy rates of the recognition memory phase in G positively correlated with those of the free recall phase in G. Although learning of novel linguistic forms is more efficient than learning of the relationships between novel linguistic forms and tastes, gustatory features influence the free recall performances of linguistic forms linked with the tastes. These results may contribute to future applications to word learning not just for patients, but also healthy people.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yan Yan
- Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Education, Hiroshima University, 1-1-1 Kagamiyama, Hiroshima 7398524, Japan; (Y.Y.); (Y.Y.); (X.L.)
| | - Yutao Yang
- Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Education, Hiroshima University, 1-1-1 Kagamiyama, Hiroshima 7398524, Japan; (Y.Y.); (Y.Y.); (X.L.)
| | - Misa Ando
- Program in Psychology, School of Education, Hiroshima University, 1-1-1 Kagamiyama, Hiroshima 7398524, Japan;
| | - Xinyi Liu
- Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Education, Hiroshima University, 1-1-1 Kagamiyama, Hiroshima 7398524, Japan; (Y.Y.); (Y.Y.); (X.L.)
| | - Toshimune Kambara
- Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Education, Hiroshima University, 1-1-1 Kagamiyama, Hiroshima 7398524, Japan; (Y.Y.); (Y.Y.); (X.L.)
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Yang Y, Yan Y, Ando M, Liu X, Kambara T. Associative Learning of New Word Forms in a First Language (L1) and Haptic Referents in a Single-Day Experiment. Eur J Investig Health Psychol Educ 2021; 11:616-626. [PMID: 34708820 PMCID: PMC8314365 DOI: 10.3390/ejihpe11020044] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/10/2021] [Revised: 06/16/2021] [Accepted: 06/18/2021] [Indexed: 11/30/2022] Open
Abstract
This study focused on the associative learning of new word forms in the first language and haptic stimuli. In this study, healthy Japanese participants performed three-step tasks. First, participants made nine subjective evaluations of haptic stimuli using five-point semantic differential scales (e.g., regarding stickiness, scored from 1 (not sticky) to 5 (sticky)). Second, the participants carried out learning and recognition tasks for associative pairs of new (meaningless) word forms in their first language (Japanese) and haptic stimulus (H condition), and performed learning and recognition tasks for new (meaningless) word forms only (W condition). The order of conditions was counterbalanced among participants. Third, participants performed free recall tasks. The results of the recognition tasks showed that the proportions and response times of the W condition were better and faster, respectively, than those of the H condition. Furthermore, preference of haptic features negatively correlated with free recall scores of the H condition; however, there was no significant difference between the free recall scores of the H and W conditions. Our results suggest that new word forms were learned better than associative pairs of new word forms and haptic stimuli in a single day of learning. Furthermore, the free recall performance of word forms associated with haptic features could also be affected by their subjective evaluation (preference).
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Affiliation(s)
- Yutao Yang
- Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Education, Hiroshima University, 1-1-1 Kagamiyama, Hiroshima 7398524, Japan; (Y.Y.); (Y.Y.); (X.L.)
| | - Yan Yan
- Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Education, Hiroshima University, 1-1-1 Kagamiyama, Hiroshima 7398524, Japan; (Y.Y.); (Y.Y.); (X.L.)
| | - Misa Ando
- Program in Psychology, School of Education, Hiroshima University, 1-1-1 Kagamiyama, Hiroshima 7398524, Japan;
| | - Xinyi Liu
- Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Education, Hiroshima University, 1-1-1 Kagamiyama, Hiroshima 7398524, Japan; (Y.Y.); (Y.Y.); (X.L.)
| | - Toshimune Kambara
- Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Education, Hiroshima University, 1-1-1 Kagamiyama, Hiroshima 7398524, Japan; (Y.Y.); (Y.Y.); (X.L.)
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Lin Z, Wang N, Yan Y, Kambara T. Vowel Length Expands Perceptual and Emotional Evaluations in Written Japanese Sound-Symbolic Words. Behav Sci (Basel) 2021; 11:90. [PMID: 34205574 PMCID: PMC8234476 DOI: 10.3390/bs11060090] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/28/2021] [Revised: 06/13/2021] [Accepted: 06/16/2021] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
In this study, we examined whether vowel length affected the perceptual and emotional evaluations of Japanese sound-symbolic words. The perceptual and emotional features of Japanese sound-symbolic words, which included short and long vowels, were evaluated by 209 native Japanese speakers. The results showed that subjective evaluations of familiarity, visual imageability, auditory imageability, tactile imageability, emotional valence, arousal, and length were significantly higher for sound-symbolic words with long vowels compared to those with short vowels. Additionally, a subjective evaluation of speed was significantly higher for written Japanese sound-symbolic words with short vowels than for those with long vowels. The current findings suggest that vowel length in written Japanese sound-symbolic words increases the perceptually and emotionally subjective evaluations of Japanese sound-symbolic words.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | | | - Toshimune Kambara
- Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Hiroshima 7398524, Japan; (Z.L.); (N.W.); (Y.Y.)
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