Storytime : a pilot study on sound symbolism and child-directed speech

Abstract

Sound symbolism and child-directed speech are two universal phenomena that help young children to learn language. This exploratory study investigates possible interactions between audio-visual perception and articulatory motor processes to test if seemingly task-irrelevant properties, such as the shape of visual stimuli, influences CDS vocalizations in a systematic manner. Participants were parents of children aged three to five years and they were asked to each read a storybook created with specific target pseudowords. These target pseudowords were matched with either a congruent or incongruent visual referent. The study hypothesized that when parent participants were presented with an incongruent label-referent condition, they will modulate the duration, pitch and intensity of their label utterances’ during CDS in a degree or direction otherwise expected in a congruent condition. Voice recordings of the participants were then analysed for duration, pitch and intensity differences. Results found significant main effects of the pseudowords (label) for all measures but main effect of congruency was not found. These findings suggest that a larger sample size and additional measures should be considered for similar future studies. Limitations and implications for future studies were discussed in detail.