Brain networks underlying the processing of sound symbolism related to softness perception

Abstract

Unlike the assumption of modern linguistics, there is non-arbitrary association between sound and meaning in sound symbolic words. Neuroimaging studies have suggested the unique contribution of the superior temporal sulcus to the processing of sound symbolism. However, because these findings are limited to the mapping between sound symbolism and visually presented objects, the processing of sound symbolic information may also involve the sensory-modality dependent mechanisms. Here, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment to test whether the brain regions engaged in the tactile processing of object properties are also involved in mapping sound symbolic information with tactually perceived object properties. Thirty-two healthy subjects conducted a matching task in which they judged the congruency between softness perceived by touch and softness associated with sound symbolic words. Congruency effect was observed in the orbitofrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, insula, medial superior frontal gyrus, cingulate gyrus, and cerebellum. This effect in the insula and medial superior frontal gyri was overlapped with softness-related activity that was separately measured in the same subjects in the tactile experiment. These results indicate that the insula and medial superior frontal gyrus play a role in processing sound symbolic information and relating it to the tactile softness information.

Japanese Sound-Symbolic Words for Representing the Hardness of an Object Are Judged Similarly by Japanese and English Speakers

“…Thirty-two Japanese subjects (17 males and 15 females) were recruited from a previous study by Kitada et al (2021a) and performed the activity described here as a separate study. The mean age of the Japanese subjects was 23.3 years (Range = 18-35).…”

“…The present study investigated the ratings of 60 sound-symbolic stimuli, which had been previously employed in a functional MRI study of Japanese subjects (Kitada et al, 2021a). The stimuli consisted of 24 conventional Japanese sound-symbolic words (12 "hard"; 12 "soft"), 24 novel sound-symbolic pseudowords aligned with the Japanese patterns (12 "hard"; 12 "soft"), and 12 non-sound-symbolic pseudowords.…”

Differences in arousal and valence on the Korean phoneme of artificial voice between Korean and Chinese women

“…From a psychological point of view, sound symbolism has been conducting research on the sensory information recognized and perceived by people through specific sounds and their emotional meaning. Researchers have attempted to find emotional meanings by linking hearing with perception areas for various senses, such as sight [3,4], taste [5], smell [6], touch [7], and motion [8]. One of the most famous examples in the visual field, the "bouba/kiki effect" is a phenomenon in which people associate a round shape when they hear "bouba" and a pointed shape when they hear "kiki" [1].…”

Neural Basis Of Sound-Symbolic Pseudoword-Shape Correspondences

“…Judging the size of visual objects during presentation of sound symbolically incongruent, relative to congruent, pseudowords led to greater activity in bilateral anterior cingulate cortex, the right anterior superior temporal gyrus, the left posterior middle temporal gyrus and the right lingual gyrus (Itagaki et al, 2019). Congruent tactile hard/soft stimuli and visually presented Japanese words that were sound-symbolic for hardness/softness, relative to incongruent stimulus pairs, led to activity in a number of areas including the anterior insula and medial superior frontal gyrus bilaterally; these regions also distinguished between congruent and incongruent stimuli on multivoxel pattern analyses (MVPA) (Kitada et al, 2021), however, the reported analyses did not explore whether individual stimuli could be distinguished.…”