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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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2
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Winter B, Lupyan G, Perry LK, Dingemanse M, Perlman M. Iconicity ratings for 14,000+ English words. Behav Res Methods 2024; 56:1640-1655. [PMID: 37081237 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-023-02112-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 03/22/2023] [Indexed: 04/22/2023]
Abstract
Iconic words and signs are characterized by a perceived resemblance between aspects of their form and aspects of their meaning. For example, in English, iconic words include peep and crash, which mimic the sounds they denote, and wiggle and zigzag, which mimic motion. As a semiotic property of words and signs, iconicity has been demonstrated to play a role in word learning, language processing, and language evolution. This paper presents the results of a large-scale norming study for more than 14,000 English words conducted with over 1400 American English speakers. We demonstrate the utility of these ratings by replicating a number of existing findings showing that iconicity ratings are related to age of acquisition, sensory modality, semantic neighborhood density, structural markedness, and playfulness. We discuss possible use cases and limitations of the rating dataset, which is made publicly available.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bodo Winter
- Department of English Language & Linguistics, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.
| | - Gary Lupyan
- Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
| | - Lynn K Perry
- Department of Psychology, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA
| | - Mark Dingemanse
- Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
| | - Marcus Perlman
- Department of English Language & Linguistics, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
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Cabana Á, Zugarramurdi C, Valle-Lisboa JC, De Deyne S. The "Small World of Words" free association norms for Rioplatense Spanish. Behav Res Methods 2024; 56:968-985. [PMID: 36922451 PMCID: PMC10017069 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-023-02070-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 01/16/2023] [Indexed: 03/17/2023]
Abstract
Large-scale word association datasets are both important tools used in psycholinguistics and used as models that capture meaning when considered as semantic networks. Here, we present word association norms for Rioplatense Spanish, a variant spoken in Argentina and Uruguay. The norms were derived through a large-scale crowd-sourced continued word association task in which participants give three associations to a list of cue words. Covering over 13,000 words and +3.6 M responses, it is currently the most extensive dataset available for Spanish. We compare the obtained dataset with previous studies in Dutch and English to investigate the role of grammatical gender and studies that used Iberian Spanish to test generalizability to other Spanish variants. Finally, we evaluated the validity of our data in word processing (lexical decision reaction times) and semantic (similarity judgment) tasks. Our results demonstrate that network measures such as in-degree provide a good prediction of lexical decision response times. Analyzing semantic similarity judgments showed that results replicate and extend previous findings demonstrating that semantic similarity derived using spreading activation or spectral methods outperform word embeddings trained on text corpora.
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Affiliation(s)
- Álvaro Cabana
- Instituto de Fundamentos y Métodos y Centro de Investigación Básica en Psicología (CIBPsi), Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay.
- Centro Interdisciplinario en Ciencia de Datos y Aprendizaje Automático (CICADA), Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay.
| | - Camila Zugarramurdi
- Instituto de Fundamentos y Métodos y Centro de Investigación Básica en Psicología (CIBPsi), Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay
- Centro Interdisciplinario en Cognición para la Enseñanza y el Aprendizaje (CICEA), Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay
| | - Juan C Valle-Lisboa
- Centro Interdisciplinario en Cognición para la Enseñanza y el Aprendizaje (CICEA), Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay
- Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay
| | - Simon De Deyne
- Computational Cognitive Science Lab, Complex Human Data Hub, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
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Betancourt ÁA, Guasch M, Ferré P. What distinguishes emotion-label words from emotion-laden words? The characterization of affective meaning from a multi-componential conception of emotions. Front Psychol 2024; 15:1308421. [PMID: 38323162 PMCID: PMC10844498 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1308421] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/09/2023] [Accepted: 01/09/2024] [Indexed: 02/08/2024] Open
Abstract
Past research that distinguishes between affective and neutral words has predominantly relied on two-dimensional models of emotion focused on valence and arousal. However, these two dimensions cannot differentiate between emotion-label words (e.g., fear) and emotion-laden words (e.g., death). In the current study, we aimed to determine the unique affective characteristics that differentiate emotion-label, emotion-laden, and neutral words. Therefore, apart from valence and arousal, we considered different affective features of multi-componential models of emotion: action, assessment, expression, feeling, and interoception. The study materials included 800 Spanish words (104 emotion-label words, 340 emotion-laden words, and 356 neutral words). To examine the differences between each word type, we carried out a Principal Component Analysis and a Random Forest Classifier technique. Our results indicate that these words are characterized more precisely when the two-dimensional approach is combined with multi-componential models. Specifically, our analyses revealed that feeling, interoception and valence are key features in accurately differentiating between emotion-label, emotion-laden, and neutral words.
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Rodriguez-Cuadrado S, Hinojosa JA, Guasch M, Romero-Rivas C, Sabater L, Suárez-Coalla P, Ferré P. Subjective age of acquisition norms for 1604 English words by Spanish L2 speakers of English and their relationship with lexico-semantic, affective, sociolinguistic and proficiency variables. Behav Res Methods 2023; 55:4437-4454. [PMID: 36477592 PMCID: PMC10700429 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-022-02026-9] [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] [Accepted: 11/12/2022] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
Abstract
Psycholinguistic studies have shown that there are many variables implicated in language comprehension and production. At the lexical level, subjective age of acquisition (AoA), the estimate of the age at which a word is acquired, is key for stimuli selection in psycholinguistic studies. AoA databases in English are often used when testing a variety of phenomena in second language (L2) speakers of English. However, these have limitations, as the norms are not provided by the target population (L2 speakers of English) but by native English speakers. In this study, we asked native Spanish L2 speakers of English to provide subjective AoA ratings for 1604 English words, and investigated whether factors related to 14 lexico-semantic and affective variables, both in Spanish and English, and to the speakers' profile (i.e., sociolinguistic variables and L2 proficiency), were related to the L2 AoA ratings. We used boosted regression trees, an advanced form of regression analysis based on machine learning and boosting algorithms, to analyse the data. Our results showed that the model accounted for a relevant proportion of deviance (58.56%), with the English AoA provided by native English speakers being the strongest predictor for L2 AoA. Additionally, L2 AoA correlated with L2 reaction times. Our database is a useful tool for the research community running psycholinguistic studies in L2 speakers of English. It adds knowledge about which factors-linked to the characteristics of both the linguistic stimuli and the speakers-affect L2 subjective AoA. The database and the data can be downloaded from: https://osf.io/gr8xd/?view_only=73b01dccbedb4d7897c8d104d3d68c46 .
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Affiliation(s)
- Sara Rodriguez-Cuadrado
- Departamento Interfacultativo de Psicología Evolutiva y de la Educación, Facultad de Formación del Profesorado y Educación, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, C/ Francisco Tomás y Valiente, n° 3, 28049, Madrid, Spain.
| | - José Antonio Hinojosa
- Instituto Pluridisciplinar, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
- Departamento Psicología Experimental, Procesos Cognitivos y Logopedia, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
- Centro de Investigación Nebrija en Cognición (CINC), Universidad Nebrija, Madrid, Spain
| | - Marc Guasch
- Departamento de Psicología y CRAMC, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain
| | - Carlos Romero-Rivas
- Departamento Interfacultativo de Psicología Evolutiva y de la Educación, Facultad de Formación del Profesorado y Educación, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, C/ Francisco Tomás y Valiente, n° 3, 28049, Madrid, Spain
| | - Lucía Sabater
- Departamento Interfacultativo de Psicología Evolutiva y de la Educación, Facultad de Formación del Profesorado y Educación, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, C/ Francisco Tomás y Valiente, n° 3, 28049, Madrid, Spain
- Instituto Pluridisciplinar, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
| | - Paz Suárez-Coalla
- Departamento de Psicología y Grupo de Investigación INCO, Universidad de Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain
| | - Pilar Ferré
- Departamento de Psicología y CRAMC, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain
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Su Y, Li Y, Li H. Familiarity ratings for 24,325 simplified Chinese words. Behav Res Methods 2023; 55:1496-1509. [PMID: 35668341 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-022-01878-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 05/16/2022] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
The present work collected familiarity norms for 20,275 two-character, 1231 three-character, and 2819 four-character simplified Chinese words from 1300 native speakers of Mandarin Chinese. The familiarity of each word was rated on a 7-point scale by at least 21 participants. The results supported the reliability and validity of the present familiarity ratings, which is the first large familiarity database for Chinese in the field. These familiarity norms can be downloaded from the supplemental materials. Furthermore, the contribution of familiarity to Chinese lexical processing was investigated using the present familiarity ratings and previous data (lexical features and visual lexical decision), mainly from two major Chinese lexicon projects, MELD-SCH and CLP. Regression analysis suggests that familiarity explained a substantial percentage of the variance in lexical processing of both simplified and traditional Chinese words, over and above the effects of word frequency and other lexical features, including age of acquisition (AoA). Further analysis identified a significantly greater familiarity effect for lower-frequency words than that for higher-frequency words. Together, among the first, our findings support the important contribution of familiarity with Chinese words to lexical processing, especially for low-frequency words.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yongqiang Su
- Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education (Beijing Normal University), Institute of Children's Reading and Learning, Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Room 1415, Houzhu Building, No.19 Xinjiekouwai Street, Haidian, Beijing, China
| | - Yixun Li
- Department of Early Childhood Education, The Education University of Hong Kong, Tai Po, Hong Kong SAR, China
| | - Hong Li
- Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education (Beijing Normal University), Institute of Children's Reading and Learning, Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Room 1415, Houzhu Building, No.19 Xinjiekouwai Street, Haidian, Beijing, China.
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New neighbours make bad fences: Form-based semantic shifts in word learning. Psychon Bull Rev 2021; 29:1017-1025. [PMID: 34918276 DOI: 10.3758/s13423-021-02037-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 11/08/2021] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
The meanings of words sometimes shift towards those of similar-sounding words. For example, expunge is etymologically related to puncture but now connotes "wiping away," and according to the Oxford English Dictionary, this shift "is probably influenced by phonetic association with sponge." However, evidence for such form-based semantic shifts is anecdotal. We therefore conducted two experiments where participants learned novel words in sentence contexts (e.g., The boss embraiched the team's proposal, so they had to start over) and applied the inferred meanings to ambiguous sentences by providing ratings on a 7-point scale (e.g., Carol embraiched Gerald. How pleased was Gerald?). The inferred meanings of novel words that are spelt like existing words (e.g., embraich, like embrace) shifted towards the meanings of those existing words, relative to control novel words learned in identical contexts (e.g., fline; participants rated Gerald as more pleased to be embraiched than to be flined). These experiments provide the first evidence that newly learned words can indeed undergo form-based semantic shifts. We propose that shifts like these occur during word learning, when words activate rather than inhibit similar-sounding words, and we discuss why they seem to be more common in low-frequency words.
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