Sound symbolic congruency detection in humans but not in great apes

Konstantina Margiotoudi; Matthias Allritz; Manuel Bohn; Friedemann Pulvermüller

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-49101-4

Sound symbolic congruency detection in humans but not in great apes

Konstantina Margiotoudi, Matthias Allritz, Manuel Bohn, Friedemann Pulvermüller

School of Psychology and Neuroscience

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Abstract

Theories on the evolution of language highlight iconicity as one of the unique features of human language. One important manifestation of iconicity is sound symbolism, the intrinsic relationship between meaningless speech sounds and visual shapes, as exemplified by the famous correspondences between the pseudowords ‘maluma’ vs. ‘takete’ and abstract curved and angular shapes. Although sound symbolism has been studied extensively in humans including young children and infants, it has never been investigated in non-human primates lacking language. In the present study, we administered the classic “takete-maluma” paradigm in both humans (N = 24 and N = 31) and great apes (N = 8). In a forced choice matching task, humans but not great apes, showed crossmodal sound symbolic congruency effects, whereby effects were more pronounced for shape selections following round-sounding primes than following edgy-sounding primes. These results suggest that the ability to detect sound symbolic correspondences is the outcome of a phylogenetic process, whose underlying emerging mechanism may be relevant to symbolic ability more generally.

Original language	English
Article number	12705
Number of pages	12
Journal	Scientific Reports
Volume	9
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-49101-4
Publication status	Published - 3 Sept 2019

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Copyright © The Author(s) 2019. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Final published version, 1.23 MBLicence: CC BY

Josep Call: Constructing Social Minds: Coordination, Communication and Cultural Transmission
Call, J. (PI)
European Research Council
1/01/15 → 31/12/20
Project: Standard

Cite this

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title = "Sound symbolic congruency detection in humans but not in great apes",

abstract = "Theories on the evolution of language highlight iconicity as one of the unique features of human language. One important manifestation of iconicity is sound symbolism, the intrinsic relationship between meaningless speech sounds and visual shapes, as exemplified by the famous correspondences between the pseudowords {\textquoteleft}maluma{\textquoteright} vs. {\textquoteleft}takete{\textquoteright} and abstract curved and angular shapes. Although sound symbolism has been studied extensively in humans including young children and infants, it has never been investigated in non-human primates lacking language. In the present study, we administered the classic “takete-maluma” paradigm in both humans (N = 24 and N = 31) and great apes (N = 8). In a forced choice matching task, humans but not great apes, showed crossmodal sound symbolic congruency effects, whereby effects were more pronounced for shape selections following round-sounding primes than following edgy-sounding primes. These results suggest that the ability to detect sound symbolic correspondences is the outcome of a phylogenetic process, whose underlying emerging mechanism may be relevant to symbolic ability more generally.",

author = "Konstantina Margiotoudi and Matthias Allritz and Manuel Bohn and Friedemann Pulverm{\"u}ller",

note = "This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany{\textquoteright}s Excellence Strategy through EXC 2025/1 “Matters of Activity (MoA)” and by the “The Sound of Meaning (SOM)”, Pu 97/22-1,“Brain Signatures of Communication (BraSiCo)”, Pu 97/23-1, and “Phonological Networks (PhoNet)”, Pu 97/25-1. K.M. was supported by the Berlin School of Mind and Brain and by the Onassis foundation. M.A was supported by the “SOMICS” ERC Synergy grant (nr.609819). M.B was supported by the European Union{\textquoteright}s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 749229. ",

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AU - Margiotoudi, Konstantina

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N1 - This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy through EXC 2025/1 “Matters of Activity (MoA)” and by the “The Sound of Meaning (SOM)”, Pu 97/22-1,“Brain Signatures of Communication (BraSiCo)”, Pu 97/23-1, and “Phonological Networks (PhoNet)”, Pu 97/25-1. K.M. was supported by the Berlin School of Mind and Brain and by the Onassis foundation. M.A was supported by the “SOMICS” ERC Synergy grant (nr.609819). M.B was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 749229.

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N2 - Theories on the evolution of language highlight iconicity as one of the unique features of human language. One important manifestation of iconicity is sound symbolism, the intrinsic relationship between meaningless speech sounds and visual shapes, as exemplified by the famous correspondences between the pseudowords ‘maluma’ vs. ‘takete’ and abstract curved and angular shapes. Although sound symbolism has been studied extensively in humans including young children and infants, it has never been investigated in non-human primates lacking language. In the present study, we administered the classic “takete-maluma” paradigm in both humans (N = 24 and N = 31) and great apes (N = 8). In a forced choice matching task, humans but not great apes, showed crossmodal sound symbolic congruency effects, whereby effects were more pronounced for shape selections following round-sounding primes than following edgy-sounding primes. These results suggest that the ability to detect sound symbolic correspondences is the outcome of a phylogenetic process, whose underlying emerging mechanism may be relevant to symbolic ability more generally.

AB - Theories on the evolution of language highlight iconicity as one of the unique features of human language. One important manifestation of iconicity is sound symbolism, the intrinsic relationship between meaningless speech sounds and visual shapes, as exemplified by the famous correspondences between the pseudowords ‘maluma’ vs. ‘takete’ and abstract curved and angular shapes. Although sound symbolism has been studied extensively in humans including young children and infants, it has never been investigated in non-human primates lacking language. In the present study, we administered the classic “takete-maluma” paradigm in both humans (N = 24 and N = 31) and great apes (N = 8). In a forced choice matching task, humans but not great apes, showed crossmodal sound symbolic congruency effects, whereby effects were more pronounced for shape selections following round-sounding primes than following edgy-sounding primes. These results suggest that the ability to detect sound symbolic correspondences is the outcome of a phylogenetic process, whose underlying emerging mechanism may be relevant to symbolic ability more generally.

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Sound symbolic congruency detection in humans but not in great apes

Abstract

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Josep Call: Constructing Social Minds: Coordination, Communication and Cultural Transmission

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