Vowel Length Expands Perceptual and Emotional Evaluations in Written Japanese Sound-Symbolic Words

Lin, Zihan; Wang, Nan; Yan, Yan; Kambara, Tomihito

doi:10.3390/bs11060090

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…We counterbalanced word lists of the Japanese pseudowords and spoken Japanese real words between participants to control the effects of stimuli (De Houwer et al 2001 ), such as the sound symbolic effects of stimuli, which linguistic features (e.g., spoken sounds) nonarbitrarily connect to referentially perceptual and emotional features (e.g., Ando et al 2021 ; Kambara and Umemura 2021 ; Lin et al 2021 ; Namba and Kambara 2020 ). Furthermore, to counterbalance word stimuli, we separated the samples into two groups.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Japanese written pseudowords can be conditioned to Japanese spoken words with positive, negative, and active emotions

Ando

Kambara

2023

Cogn Process

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This study aimed to examine whether Japanese participants condition spoken words’ meanings to written pseudowords. In Survey 1, we selected spoken words associated with negative (α = .91) and positive (α = .79) features for Experiment 1 and passive (α = .90) and active (α = .80) features for Experiment 2. In Experiment 1, participants evaluated four written pseudowords’ emotional valence using a 7-point semantic differential scale (1: negative; 7: positive) before and after conditioning spoken words with negative, neutral, or positive features to each pseudoword. In the conditioning phase, participants read each pseudoword, listened to a spoken word, and verbally repeated each spoken word. The results showed that a pseudoword was conditioned to spoken words with positive and negative features. In Experiment 2, participants evaluated four pseudowords’ activeness using a 7-point semantic differential scale (1: passive; 7: active) before and after conditioning spoken words of passive, neutral, and active features to each written pseudoword. In the conditioning phase, the participants read each written pseudoword, listened to a spoken word, and repeated the spoken word. The results showed that the activeness evaluations were more increased for pseudowords conditioned to spoken words of active and neutral features after conditioning than before conditioning but were unchanged for a pseudoword conditioned to those with passive features before and after conditioning. Additonally, Survey 2’s results showed that although the positiveness and activeness responses of the words used in Experiments 1 and 2 were controlled well, the lack of significant differences among positiveness responses of words may influence the evaluative conditioning in Experiment 2. That is, when participants condition passive (low arousal) words’ activeness (arousal) ratings to those of pseudowords, words’ positiveness (valence) ratings would be important in the evaluative conditioning. Our findings suggest that participants can condition spoken word meanings of preference and activeness to those of written pseudowords. It also indicates that linguistically evaluative conditioning’s effects are robust in a non-alphabetic language.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Japanese written pseudowords can be conditioned to Japanese spoken words with positive, negative, and active emotions

Ando

Kambara

2023

Cogn Process

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“…The current research focuses on the difference in vowel length between Japanese short and long vowels. Long vowels are estimated to be 2,4 times lengthier than short vowels, and long vowels contain a pitch fall within a word, while short vowels do not (Lin et al, 2021). These previous studies also find that short and long vowels differ in terms of duration and pitch fall.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 71%

“…The meaning of a word may vary when the pitch contour is altered (1); an unaccented word does not have this high-low pitch sequence (2). Since only the first mora of a long vowel receives a high pitch when accented, the high low-pitch contour must occur within the long vowel (Lin et al, 2021). However, the pitch contour of a long vowel must be either high-high or low-high, followed by a high pitch, as demonstrated in Figure 2.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Profile of Short Vowel ‘A’ in Japanese Language that Determines the Meaning as Pronounced by University Students in Indonesia

Febriyanti

2023

Lingua Cultura

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The research discussed that certain sounds, like the short vowel ‘a’, which was entirely different from the long vowel ‘a’, were specific to Japanese and had distinct meanings from those of Indonesian. As a result, 60 students majoring in Japanese language instruction from six Indonesian universities were interviewed face-to-face and recorded. Native speakers of the Japanese language were requested to record their voices using the short vowel ‘a’ as the students’ sound reference. After that, the students were asked to identify and produce the short vowel ‘a’. PRAAT was then used to analyze the students’ recordings. Additionally, the students’ sounds were contrasted with those of Japanese native speakers. The spectrogram analysis clearly shows that students are still having trouble telling the difference between the long vowel ‘a’ (OBAASAN) and the short vowel ‘a’ (OBAASAN) because they produce significantly longer short vowels ‘a’ that are almost as long as double vowel ‘a’. This is highly likely to occur since Japanese language learners are not taught to deliberately recognize the distinct sounds, such as the long and short vowels ‘a’, that distinguish the language’s meanings. In addition, their low frequency and energy density of pronunciation of the short vowel ‘a’ suggest they are less confident in their pronunciation.

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“…On the other hand, we did not consider sound-symbolic (non-arbitrary) effects of the associative learning for novel linguistic forms and gustatory stimuli. Previous studies on sound symbolism have reported that specific verbal sounds or oral shapes that are required to produce certain verbal sounds are associated with certain perceptual and emotional evaluations [ 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 ]. A previous study found that specific verbal sounds increased expectations of certain tastes [ 50 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Third, each subject evaluated the candy or chocolate using each 5 point semantic differential scale. We based each semantic differential scale on other studies [ 32 , 33 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 ]. The 10 semantic differential scales linked with sweetness (1: not sweet; 5: sweet), hardness (1: soft; 5: hard), coolness (1: not cool; 5: cool), sourness (1: not sour; 5: sour), astringency (1: not astringent; 5: astringent), spiciness (1: not spicy; 5: spicy), familiarity (1: unfamiliar; 5: familiar), preference (1: not like; 5: like), arousal (1: calm; 5: excited), and deliciousness (1: not delicious; 5: delicious).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multisensory Connections of Novel Linguistic Stimuli in Japanese as a Native Language and Referential Tastes

Yan

Yang

Ando

et al. 2021

EJIHPE

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Previous findings have shown essential connections between linguistic and gustatory stimuli for people with autism or lexical gustatory synesthesia. We examined the associative learning of novel linguistic forms in Japanese as a native language and tastes (candies and chocolates) for healthy people. Healthy subjects performed four phases: (a) evaluation phase of gustatory features; (b) learning phases of novel linguistic form and gustatory stimulus pairs (G) or novel word forms (W); (c) recognition memory phases linked with G and W; and (d) free recall phase for G and W. In the recognition memory phases, the performance scores of W were higher than those of G, while there was no significant difference between response times of G and W. Additionally, no difference between recall performances in G and W was also shown. A subjective evaluation of gustatory features (sweetness) negatively correlated with the recall score for linguistic forms connected to the gustatory feature, whereas the accuracy rates of the recognition memory phase in G positively correlated with those of the free recall phase in G. Although learning of novel linguistic forms is more efficient than learning of the relationships between novel linguistic forms and tastes, gustatory features influence the free recall performances of linguistic forms linked with the tastes. These results may contribute to future applications to word learning not just for patients, but also healthy people.

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Vowel Length Expands Perceptual and Emotional Evaluations in Written Japanese Sound-Symbolic Words

Cited by 6 publications

References 64 publications

Japanese written pseudowords can be conditioned to Japanese spoken words with positive, negative, and active emotions

Japanese written pseudowords can be conditioned to Japanese spoken words with positive, negative, and active emotions

Profile of Short Vowel ‘A’ in Japanese Language that Determines the Meaning as Pronounced by University Students in Indonesia

Multisensory Connections of Novel Linguistic Stimuli in Japanese as a Native Language and Referential Tastes

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