Children Touching Words: Studying Tactile Sound Symbolism in Young Children

Summary

Sound symbolism in the tactile modality has been scarcely studied, and only in adults. This article presents a protocol to study tactile sound symbolism in young children by using play, toys, and touch-appropriate materials. The protocol has been tested with Spanish speaking children.

Abstract

This article presents a protocol for investigating the existence of tactile sound symbolism in young children. Sound symbolism is the systematic correspondence between the sound of a word and physical features of the object to which the word refers. Tactile sound-symbolism has been scarcely studied. Moreover, it has been studied only in adults. Studying tactile sound symbolism in children should offer novel insights that may be relevant not only for understanding the nature of sound symbolic correspondences, but also for understanding the development and origin of the phenomenon. The protocol adapts a forced choice paradigm to make it accessible to 3-4 year old children by using toys, play, and touch-appropriate materials. The protocol consists of two experiments: a pointing selection task, and a naming task. Sound symbolic associations were found in the naming task with Spanish speaking children.

Introduction

The protocol presented in this article aims to determine the presence of tactile sound symbolism (i.e., word-tactile systematic correspondences) in young children. The rationale underlying the protocol is to use play to engage children’s participation in two tasks that tap into word-tactile associations. Briefly, the first task presents children with a nonword and asks them to point to a corresponding texture. The second task presents a texture and asks them to name it with a corresponding nonword. The protocol can be utilized with a wide variety of populations, since it only requires unbiased samples of neurotypical monolingual children. The protocol has been t....

Protocol

The presented protocol was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Human Communication, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos, México.

1. Participants

1. Recruit neurotypical monolingual young children. Obtain consent from their parents. The protocol has been tested with children 3.5-4.5 years of age. Thus, children as young as 3.5 years of age can complete the task. The protocol is based on play and storytelling to engage the cooperation of young children, but it can be applied with older children.
2. Assign participants to two experimental groups. In order to reduce the possibility of obt....

Results

Results of the study¹³ with children ranging from 3.5 to 4.5 years of age illustrate the range of possible results of the protocol, since sound symbolism was found in Experiment 2, but not in Experiment 1. Moreover, the results also illustrate how nonsound symbolic biases can be identified, since a nonsound symbolic bias towards smoothness was found in Experiment 1.

Experiment 1
We applied Experiment 1 to a sample of 29 neurotypical monolingual Spanish-speaking ch.......

Discussion

The presented protocol is appropriate for exploring tactile sound symbolic correspondences in young children. Moreover, due to the fact that it incorporates two tasks that tap into the tactile and auditory modalities of children, it is also appropriate for identifying bias in the auditory or tactile modalities. The two tasks in the protocol allow experimenters to identify possible bias induced by the tactile or auditory modality, by the difficulty of the task, or by the covert and overt phonological processing. Applicati.......

Materials

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
4 pairs of cylinders with small oppenings	oat cans were used in the actual experiment
4 pairs of plastic animal toys
coarse grain sand paper	aluminum oxide sandpaper (grit 40)
polar fleece fabric