
==== Front
bioRxiv
BIORXIV
bioRxiv
2692-8205
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

10.1101/2024.09.03.610973
preprint
1
Article
DIFFERENTIAL CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE SPECTRO-TEMPORAL AND VOCAL CHARACTERISTICS OF AUDITORY PSEUDOWORDS TO MULTIPLE SOUND-SYMBOLIC MAPPINGS
Lacey Simon
Matthews Kaitlyn L.
Hoffmann A. M.
Sathian K.
Nygaard Lynne C.
05 9 2024
2024.09.03.610973https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which allows reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.
http://biorxiv.org/lookup/doi/10.1101/2024.09.03.610973
nihpp-2024.09.03.610973.pdf
Sound symbolism, the idea that the sound of a word alone can convey its meaning, is often studied using auditory pseudowords. For example, people reliably assign the auditory pseudowords /bouba/ and /kiki/ to rounded and pointed shapes, respectively. Previously we showed that representational dissimilarity matrices (RDMs) of the shape ratings of auditory pseudowords correlated significantly with RDMs of acoustic parameters reflecting spectro-temporal variations; the ratings also correlated significantly with voice quality features. Here, participants rated auditory pseudowords on scales representing categorical opposites across seven meaning domains, including shape. Examination of the relationships of the perceptual ratings to spectro-temporal and vocal parameters of the pseudowords essentially replicated our previous findings for shape while varying patterns emerged for the other domains. Thus, the spectro-temporal and vocal properties of spoken pseudowords contribute differentially to sound-symbolic mapping depending on the meaning domain.
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