The Cognition, Language, Sound Symbolism, Iconicity (CLaSSI) Lab

Sound Symbolism

If you were asked which of these shapes is “bouba” and which is “kiki”, you would probably agree that “bouba” sounds like a better word for the round shape, and “kiki” a better word for the spiky shape.

This is an example of sound symbolism: intuitive associations between language sounds and different kinds of things in the world. People also associate language sounds with different sizes, colours, tastes, emotions, personality traits, and so on.

We explore why people make these associations, and what this means for human cognition and language.

Iconicity

Some words sound like their meanings.

Examples include onomatopoeia like “mumble”, “squeak” or “crash”.

Others are more subtle. The sounds in “balloon” match its roundness and softness, while those in “cactus” are associated with spikiness and danger.

“Bumbling” sounds like it would knock something over in a store and the word “gooey” sounds, well, gooey.

The term for this is iconicity. We study the processing of iconic words and their function in language.

Name Sound Symbolism

The fact that people associate qualities with a word based on its sound has interesting implications for names. In fact, people will associate different personality traits with a name based on its sound. For example, participants agree that Molly sounds kind while Kirk sounds outgoing. We study these associations and their consequences.

Language Processing

We are also interested in topics related to language processing in general. For example, how do we store and retrieve the meanings of words? What makes some words easier to process than others?

Embodied Cognition

The past few decades have shown that cognition cannot be understood without taking the body and its senses into account. This could be visualizing a story or imagining the feeling of performing different actions. We explore the various ways in which cognition is multimodal and “embodied”.