Tactile perception and sound symbolism across cultures

• Main Author: Wong, Li Shan
• Other Authors: Ryo Kitada
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2021
• Subjects: Social sciences::Psychology
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/150986
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The acoustic features of words are considered to be arbitrarily associated with its meaning in modern linguistics. However, studies have increasingly shown that non-arbitrary associations between sounds and meanings may be present in some words. Despite the background observed in this non-arbitrary association (i.e., sound symbolism), the consistency of sound symbolism across cultures is not well understood. Here, we examined the cross-cultural effects on the understanding of sound symbolic words that are associated with tactile perception of softness. We used 24 Japanese sound symbolic words and 24 novel sound symbolic words generated by genetic algorithm (GA). Japanese, Singaporean, and US participants evaluated each word on four dimensions: 1) softness-hardness, 2) coldness-warmness, 3) smoothness-roughness, and 4) familiarity. Analyses on ratings of familiarity confirmed that Singaporean and US participants could not differentiate novel from existing sound symbolic words. Conversely, univariate analyses showed that all subject groups were able to differentiate between softness-hardness impressions for both existing and novel sound symbolic words. Furthermore, multivariate analysis using multidimensional scaling analysis reduced the above four dimensions to two dimensions: 1) surface texture and 2) familiarity. Multiple regression analyses on Dimension 1 (surface texture) with consonants as independent variables showed that consonants “G” and “K” significantly explained the variance of data on surface texture perceptions. These findings indicate that Japanese sound symbolic words involve specific alphabets which can represent softness-hardness impressions across cultures.