文章基本信息

标题：Affective Congruence between Sound and Meaning of Words Facilitates Semantic Decision
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作者：Arash Aryani ; Arthur M. Jacobs
期刊名称：Behavioral Sciences
电子版ISSN：2076-328X
出版年度：2018
卷号：8
期号：6
页码：56
DOI：10.3390/bs8060056
语种：English
出版社：MDPI Publishing
摘要：A similarity between the form and meaning of a word (i.e., iconicity) may help language users to more readily access its meaning through direct form-meaning mapping. Previous work has supported this view by providing empirical evidence for this facilitatory effect in sign language, as well as for onomatopoetic words (e.g., cuckoo) and ideophones (e.g., zigzag). Thus, it remains largely unknown whether the beneficial role of iconicity in making semantic decisions can be considered a general feature in spoken language applying also to “ordinary” words in the lexicon. By capitalizing on the affective domain, and in particular arousal, we organized words in two distinctive groups of iconic vs. non-iconic based on the congruence vs. incongruence of their lexical (meaning) and sublexical (sound) arousal. In a two-alternative forced choice task, we asked participants to evaluate the arousal of printed words that were lexically either high or low arousing. In line with our hypothesis, iconic words were evaluated more quickly and more accurately than their non-iconic counterparts. These results indicate a processing advantage for iconic words, suggesting that language users are sensitive to sound-meaning mappings even when words are presented visually and read silently.
关键词：sound-meaning mappings; sound symbolism; effect of sound on meaning; semantic decision task; neurocognitive poetics; processing fluency; poetry sound-meaning mappings ; sound symbolism ; effect of sound on meaning ; semantic decision task ; neurocognitive poetics ; processing fluency ; poetry