Dataset Information

Stimulus Parameters Underlying Sound-Symbolic Mapping of Auditory Pseudowords to Visual Shapes.

ABSTRACT: Sound symbolism refers to non-arbitrary mappings between the sounds of words and their meanings and is often studied by pairing auditory pseudowords such as "maluma" and "takete" with rounded and pointed visual shapes, respectively. However, it is unclear what auditory properties of pseudowords contribute to their perception as rounded or pointed. Here, we compared perceptual ratings of the roundedness/pointedness of large sets of pseudowords and shapes to their acoustic and visual properties using a novel application of representational similarity analysis (RSA). Representational dissimilarity matrices (RDMs) of the auditory and visual ratings of roundedness/pointedness were significantly correlated crossmodally. The auditory perceptual RDM correlated significantly with RDMs of spectral tilt, the temporal fast Fourier transform (FFT), and the speech envelope. Conventional correlational analyses showed that ratings of pseudowords transitioned from rounded to pointed as vocal roughness (as measured by the harmonics-to-noise ratio, pulse number, fraction of unvoiced frames, mean autocorrelation, shimmer, and jitter) increased. The visual perceptual RDM correlated significantly with RDMs of global indices of visual shape (the simple matching coefficient, image silhouette, image outlines, and Jaccard distance). Crossmodally, the RDMs of the auditory spectral parameters correlated weakly but significantly with those of the global indices of visual shape. Our work establishes the utility of RSA for analysis of large stimulus sets and offers novel insights into the stimulus parameters underlying sound symbolism, showing that sound-to-shape mapping is driven by acoustic properties of pseudowords and suggesting audiovisual cross-modal correspondence as a basis for language users' sensitivity to this type of sound symbolism.

SUBMITTER: Lacey S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7896554 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Stimulus Parameters Underlying Sound-Symbolic Mapping of Auditory Pseudowords to Visual Shapes.

Lacey Simon S Jamal Yaseen Y List Sara M SM McCormick Kelly K Sathian K K Nygaard Lynne C LC

Cognitive science 20200901 9

Sound symbolism refers to non-arbitrary mappings between the sounds of words and their meanings and is often studied by pairing auditory pseudowords such as "maluma" and "takete" with rounded and pointed visual shapes, respectively. However, it is unclear what auditory properties of pseudowords contribute to their perception as rounded or pointed. Here, we compared perceptual ratings of the roundedness/pointedness of large sets of pseudowords and shapes to their acoustic and visual properties us ...[more]

PMID: 32909637

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Project description:Reading is a unique human cognitive skill and its acquisition was proven to extensively affect both brain organization and neuroanatomy. Differently from western sighted individuals, literacy rates via tactile reading systems, such as Braille, are declining, thus imposing an alarming threat to literacy among non-visual readers. This decline is due to many reasons including the length of training needed to master Braille, which must also include extensive tactile sensitivity exercises, the lack of proper Braille instruction and the high costs of Braille devices. The far-reaching consequences of low literacy rates, raise the need to develop alternative, cheap and easy-to-master non-visual reading systems. To this aim, we developed OVAL, a new auditory orthography based on a visual-to-auditory sensory-substitution algorithm. Here we present its efficacy for successful words-reading, and investigation of the extent to which redundant features defining characters (i.e., adding specific colors to letters conveyed into audition via different musical instruments) facilitate or impede auditory reading outcomes. Thus, we tested two groups of blindfolded sighted participants who were either exposed to a monochromatic or to a color version of OVAL. First, we showed that even before training, all participants were able to discriminate between 11 OVAL characters significantly more than chance level. Following 6 hours of specific OVAL training, participants were able to identify all the learned characters, differentiate them from untrained letters, and read short words/pseudo-words of up to 5 characters. The Color group outperformed the Monochromatic group in all tasks, suggesting that redundant characters' features are beneficial for auditory reading. Overall, these results suggest that OVAL is a promising auditory-reading tool that can be used by blind individuals, by people with reading deficits as well as for the investigation of reading specific processing dissociated from the visual modality.

Dataset Information

Stimulus Parameters Underlying Sound-Symbolic Mapping of Auditory Pseudowords to Visual Shapes.

Publications

Stimulus Parameters Underlying Sound-Symbolic Mapping of Auditory Pseudowords to Visual Shapes.

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