Semantic and Perceptual Associations in Sound Iconicity

Research Project

Project/Area Number	15K02547
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Multi-year Fund
Section	一般
Research Field	Linguistics
Research Institution	Konan University
Principal Investigator	AURACHER Jan 甲南大学, 公私立大学の部局等, 講師 (10548035)
Project Period (FY)	2015-04-01 – 2016-03-31
Project Status	Discontinued (Fiscal Year 2015)
Budget Amount *help	¥3,250,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,500,000、Indirect Cost: ¥750,000) Fiscal Year 2017: ¥1,170,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000、Indirect Cost: ¥270,000) Fiscal Year 2016: ¥1,040,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000、Indirect Cost: ¥240,000) Fiscal Year 2015: ¥1,040,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000、Indirect Cost: ¥240,000)
Keywords	sound iconicity
Outline of Annual Research Achievements	Aim of the research project is to monitor the relative influence of perceivable and semantic features of stimuli on sound iconic associations. To this end, experiments are conducted in which implicit associations between acoustic and visual stimuli are tested. In these experiments, perceivable and semantic features of the visual stimuli oppose each other. For example, big objects (e.g., elephant) are depicted smaller than small objects (e.g., mouse). Two experiments were conducted in which associations of vowels with size were tested. Previous research suggests that back vowels are preferably associated with bigness whereas front vowels are preferably associated with smallness. The research design was based on the idea that participants are able to categorize stimuli faster when associated stimuli are allocated to the same response behavior. In the first experiment, visual stimuli depicted either small or big animals. In the second experiment, visual stimuli depicted dominant or submissive behavior. Based on previous research it was hypothesized that participants tend to implicitly associate big animals and dominant behavior with back-vowels. In both experiments, perceivable features of the pictures (i.e., size and shape) predicted the respective opposite result. Results clearly suggest that the influence of semantic features outweighs the one of perceivable features. That is, participants preferably associated visual stimuli that connoted bigness or dominance with back-vowels even if size and shape of the pictures predicted associations with front vowels.