The Sound of Grasp Affordances: Influence of Grasp-Related Size of Categorized Objects on Vocalization

The size and shape of sound: The role of articulation and acoustics in iconicity and crossmodal correspondencesa)

Onomatopoeias like hiss and peep are iconic because their forms resemble their meanings. Iconicity can also involve forms and meanings in different modalities, such as when people match the nonce words bouba and kiki to round and angular objects, and mil and mal to small and large ones, also known as "sound symbolism." This paper focuses on what specific analogies motivate such correspondences in spoken language: do people associate shapes and size with how phonemes sound (auditory), or how they are produced (articulatory)? Based on a synthesis of empirical evidence probing the cognitive mechanisms underlying different types of sound symbolism, this paper argues that analogies based on acoustics alone are often sufficient, rendering extant articulatory explanations for many iconic phenomena superfluous. This paper further suggests that different types of crossmodal iconicity in spoken language can fruitfully be understood as an extension of onomatopoeia: when speakers iconically depict such perceptual characteristics as size and shape, they mimic the acoustics that are correlated with these characteristics in the natural world.

Dance and the Embodied Social Cognition of Mating: Carlos Saura's Tango in the Perspective of the Tie-Up Theory

This paper analyzes Carlos Saura's film Tango through the theoretical lens of the Tie-Up Theory to explore how fictional narratives can serve as laboratories for investigating the embodied social cognition of romantic relationships. The study shows how dance, particularly tango, functions both as subject matter and cognitive metaphor in representing the complex dynamics of couple formation and maintenance. The film's meta-representational structure, combining the creation of a dance performance with the exploration of actual relationships, reveals how cultural forms serve as cognitive scaffolds for understanding complex social dynamics. The study contributes to our understanding of how artistic representation can reveal typically implicit aspects of relationship cognition by demonstrating the value of integrating multidisciplinary perspectives of cognitive theory, psychology of mating, and cultural theory.

Sound symbolism in manual and vocal responses: phoneme-response interactions associated with grasping as well as vertical and size dimensions of keypresses

It has been shown that reading the vowel [i] and consonant [t] facilitates precision grip responses, while [ɑ] and [k] are associated with faster power grip responses. A similar effect has been observed when participants perform responses with small or large response keys. The present study investigated whether the vowels and consonants could produce different effects with the grip responses and keypresses when the speech units are read aloud (Experiment 1) or silently (Experiment 2). As a second objective, the study investigated whether the recently observed effect, in which the upper position of a visual stimulus is associated with faster vocalizations of the high vowel and the lower position is associated with the low vowel, can be observed in manual responses linking, for example, the [i] with responses of the upper key and [ɑ] with lower responses. Firstly, the study showed that when the consonants are overtly articulated, the interaction effect can be observed only with the grip responses, while the vowel production was shown to systematically influence small/large keypresses, as well as precision/power grip responses. Secondly, the vowel [i] and consonant [t] were associated with the upper responses, while [ɑ] and [k] were associated with the lower responses, particularly in the overt articulation task. The paper delves into the potential sound-symbolic implications of these phonetic elements, suggesting that their acoustic and articulatory characteristics might implicitly align them with specific response magnitudes, vertical positions, and grip types.

Sound-action symbolism in relation to precision manipulation and whole-hand grasp usage

It has been suggested that actions can provide a fruitful conceptual context for sound symbolism phenomena, and that tight interaction between manual and articulatory processes might cause that hand actions, in particular, are sound-symbolically associated with specific speech sounds. Experiment 1 investigated whether novel words, built from speech sounds that have been previously linked to precision or power grasp responses, are implicitly associated with perceived actions that present precision manipulation or whole-hand grasp tool-use or the corresponding utilisation pantomimes. In the two-alternative forced-choice task, the participants were more likely to match novel words to tool-use actions and corresponding pantomimes that were sound-symbolically congruent with the words. Experiment 2 showed that the same or even larger sound-action symbolism effect can be observed when the pantomimes present unfamiliar utilisation actions. Based on this we propose that the sound-action symbolism might originate from the same sensorimotor mechanisms that process the meaning of iconic gestural signs. The study presents a novel sound-action phenomenon and supports the view that hand-mouth interaction might manifest itself by associating specific speech sounds with grasp-related utilisations.

Beyond grasping: Syllables processing influences mere manual keypress

We aimed to better understand the link between vocalization and grasping. We especially test whether neurocognitive processes underlying this interaction are not grasping specific. To test this hypothesis, we used the procedure of a previous experiment, showing that silently reading the syllable KA and TI can facilitate power- and precision-grip responses, respectively. In our experiment, the participants have to silently read the syllable KA or TI but, according to the color of the syllables, have merely to press a large or small switch (we removed the grasping component of responses). Responses on the large switch were faster when the syllable KA was read compared with TI and conversely for the responses carried out on the small switch. This result supports that the influence of vocalization is not restricted to grasping responses, and, in addition, it supports an alternative, non-grasping-specific model of interactions between vocalization and grasping.

The elicitation of affordance depends on conceptual attributes: evidence from a virtual reality study

Affordance is a property of object with respect to the observer, which is related to the attributes of the object. In the present study, we examined whether affordance elicitation is primarily based on the conceptual attributes or instance attributes of the object. To distinguish the role of the two types of attributes in elicitation of affordance, we manipulated the size of a pan in virtual reality (Experiment 1). The critical condition is the giant pan, which should elicit manipulability affordance if affordance is concept-based and it should not elicit manipulability affordance if affordance is instance-based. The results support the former assumption, i.e., the elicitation of affordance is concept-based. To confirm the conclusion, we created a water-handled pan in virtual reality and examined its manipulability affordance (Experiment 2). The water-handled pan looks similar to a normal pan, but its handle is composed of flowing water which, in concept, cannot be grasped. Consistent with the concept-based conclusion, the water-handled pan did not elicit manipulability affordance. The present findings provided convergent evidence that ordinary people rely primarily on conceptual attributes of the object to elicit manipulability affordance.

Sound-Action Symbolism

Recent evidence has shown linkages between actions and segmental elements of speech. For instance, close-front vowels are sound symbolically associated with the precision grip, and front vowels are associated with forward-directed limb movements. The current review article presents a variety of such sound-action effects and proposes that they compose a category of sound symbolism that is based on grounding a conceptual knowledge of a referent in articulatory and manual action representations. In addition, the article proposes that even some widely known sound symbolism phenomena such as the sound-magnitude symbolism can be partially based on similar sensorimotor grounding. It is also discussed that meaning of suprasegmental speech elements in many instances is similarly grounded in body actions. Sound symbolism, prosody, and body gestures might originate from the same embodied mechanisms that enable a vivid and iconic expression of a meaning of a referent to the recipient.