What can synaesthesia teach us about sound symbolism?
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1
University of Rochester, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, United States of America
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2
University of Sussex, Psychology, United Kingdom
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3
University of Edinburgh, Psychology, United Kingdom
Sound symbolism is a linguistic device that directly links phonological form to semantic meaning. Sound symbolism can allow speakers to understand the meanings of etymologically unfamiliar foreign words, although the mechanisms are not well understood. We examined whether sound symbolism is mediated by the same types of cross-modal processes that typify synaesthetic experiences. Synaesthesia is an inherited condition in which stimuli (e.g., words) cause additional, unusual cross-modal percepts (e.g., colours). Synaesthesia may be an exaggerated form of normal cross-sensory processing; if so, we may find synaesthesia-like correlates in normal cross-modal processing, such as in sound symbolism. To test this we predicted that synaesthetes may have superior sound symbolic understanding. In our study, 20 grapheme-colour synaesthetes (who experience colours from letters/digits) and 60 non-synaesthete controls were presented with adjectives from 10 unfamiliar languages (e.g., 'avraam' [Tamil] ) and were asked to guess each meaning from two choices (loud or quiet?). Both groups showed superior understanding compared to chance, but synaesthetes significantly outperformed controls. This heightened ability suggests that sound symbolism may rely on the type of cross-sensory integration that drives synaesthetes' unusual experiences. It also suggests synaesthesia co-occurs with heightened multisensory skills in domains unrelated to the specific form of synaesthesia.
Keywords:
synesthesia,
sound symbolism,
Cross-modal correspondences
Conference:
XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014.
Presentation Type:
Symposia
Topic:
Sensation and Perception
Citation:
Bankieris
KR and
Simner
J
(2015). What can synaesthesia teach us about sound symbolism?.
Conference Abstract:
XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00411
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Received:
14 Apr 2015;
Published Online:
24 Apr 2015.
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Correspondence:
Dr. Kaitlyn R Bankieris, University of Rochester, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Rochester, New York, 14627, United States of America, kbankieris@bcs.rochester.edu