Aryani Arash, Jacobs Arthur M
Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, D-14195 Berlin, Germany.
Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience Berlin (CCNB), D-14195 Berlin, Germany.
Behav Sci (Basel). 2018 May 31;8(6):56. doi: 10.3390/bs8060056.
A similarity between the form and meaning of a word (i.e., iconicity) may help language users to more readily access its meaning through direct form-meaning mapping. Previous work has supported this view by providing empirical evidence for this facilitatory effect in sign language, as well as for onomatopoetic words (e.g., cuckoo) and ideophones (e.g., zigzag). Thus, it remains largely unknown whether the beneficial role of iconicity in making semantic decisions can be considered a general feature in spoken language applying also to "ordinary" words in the lexicon. By capitalizing on the affective domain, and in particular arousal, we organized words in two distinctive groups of iconic vs. non-iconic based on the congruence vs. incongruence of their lexical (meaning) and sublexical (sound) arousal. In a two-alternative forced choice task, we asked participants to evaluate the arousal of printed words that were lexically either high or low arousing. In line with our hypothesis, iconic words were evaluated more quickly and more accurately than their non-iconic counterparts. These results indicate a processing advantage for iconic words, suggesting that language users are sensitive to sound-meaning mappings even when words are presented visually and read silently.
一个单词的形式与意义之间的相似性（即象似性）可能有助于语言使用者通过直接的形式-意义映射更轻松地获取其意义。先前的研究通过提供手语中这种促进作用的实证证据，以及象声词（如布谷鸟）和拟声词（如曲折）的实证证据，支持了这一观点。因此，象似性在语义决策中所起的有益作用是否可被视为口语中的一个普遍特征，也适用于词汇表中的“普通”单词，在很大程度上仍然未知。通过利用情感领域，特别是唤醒，我们根据词汇（意义）和次词汇（声音）唤醒的一致性与不一致性，将单词分为象似性与非象似性两个不同的组。在一个二选一的强制选择任务中，我们要求参与者评估印刷单词在词汇上是高唤醒还是低唤醒。与我们的假设一致，象似性单词比非象似性单词的评估速度更快、更准确。这些结果表明象似性单词具有加工优势，这表明即使单词以视觉形式呈现并默读，语言使用者也会对声音-意义映射敏感。
