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

Abstract

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.

Keywords: Sound symbolism; grasping; pantomimes; speech; utilisation.

Figure 1.

Illustration of stimuli used in Experiment 1 and 2. The image of a1 presents an example of an object-directed WHGU action, a2 presents an example of an object-directed PM action, b1 presents an example of a pantomimic WHGU action, b2 presents an example of a pantomimic PM action, c1 presents an example of a pantomimic WHGU pseudo-action, and c2 presents an example of a pantomimic PM pseudo-action. Experiment 1 employed the stimuli presented in the images of a and b, while Experiment 2 employed the stimuli presented in the images of b and c.

Figure 2.

Experiment 1: The mean percentage of sound-symbolically congruent responses as a function of the action category (object-directed vs pantomimes) and word size (“small” words vs “large” words). The asterisks indicate the statistically significant differences (***p < .001). The whiskers represent the confidence intervals (95%) for each condition.

Figure 3.

Experiment 2: The mean percentage of sound-symbolically congruent responses as a function of the action category (real vs pseudo-pantomimes) and word size (“small” words vs “large” words). The asterisks indicate the statistically significant differences (**p < .01). The whiskers represent the confidence intervals (95%) for each condition.