I completed my Ph.D. in German language education at the LMU (University of Munich, Germany) in 2007. My research interests lie in the areas of language iconicity, natural language programming (NLP), and cultural stereotypes. I have lived and worked in Japan since 2009. From 2016 to 2019 I worked as Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics. Since April 2021 I have held the position of Senior Lecturer for German at Singapore National University. Address: Kyoto, Kyōto, Japan
This paper reports results from an empirical study in synaesthetic sound iconicity, a specific fo... more This paper reports results from an empirical study in synaesthetic sound iconicity, a specific form of phonosemantics defined as implicit and systematic associations of acoustic features of phonemes with non-acoustic phenomena. I argue that acoustic features of phonemes are implicitly associated with one pole or the other (e.g., high level or low level) of bipolar semantic concepts such as activity or dominance. Based on this assumption, it was hypothesized that pseudo-words consisting of plosive consonants and back vowels are associated with the emotion of anger, whereas pseudo-words consisting of sonorant consonants and front vowels are associated with the emotion of fear. This hypothesis was tested in an experimental setting, applying a speeded classification paradigm.
In the current study, we explored the hypothesis that the level of language concreteness influenc... more In the current study, we explored the hypothesis that the level of language concreteness influences readers’ emotional involvement and, thus, fosters the evocation of suspense. To this end, 141 suspenseful texts with comparable content were assessed altogether by 1226 participants on items referring to emotional involvement and suspense. A concreteness score per text was calculated from the ratio between concrete and abstract verbs. Additionally, participants were asked to provide personal data, such as sex, age, or reading habits, and to answer items referring to their ability to feel empathy (trait empathy). Applying a stepwise multiple regression analysis we found that language concreteness is one significant predictor for emotional involvement and suspense (next toaffinity for suspenseandtrait empathy). These results are discussed with respect to their implications on the nature of suspense and on the so-calledparadox of suspense.
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Sep 1, 2015
Sound symbolism is an idea that sounds itself has the impression. In most of the previous psychol... more Sound symbolism is an idea that sounds itself has the impression. In most of the previous psychology and linguistics researches, stimuli were presented visually with alphabets, and subjects directly answered the impression of the sound. The purpose of this study is that establishing a behavioral paradigm applicable to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research when the sound stimulus was presented aurally. In this experiment, we focused on sound symbolism in visual size. Subjects were required to answer visual size difference between standard and target stimulus. Visual stimuli were a gray circle on black background LCD screen. Sound stimuli were /bobo/ and /pipi/, and were assumed to have impression of “bigger” and “smaller,” respectively, according to previous researches. Currently, brain activity of the sound symbolism is examined in MRI using ours previous behavior paradigm. The result suggested that our paradigm is able to use for fMRI study. However, MRI imaging results shows that the location and amount of activity is different by subjects, suggesting the neural substrate of the sound symbolism could vary between individuals. Relationships between the brain differences and individual behavioral differences will be discussed.
This study aimed to test sound-meaning relations in Japanese poetry. To this end, participants as... more This study aimed to test sound-meaning relations in Japanese poetry. To this end, participants assessed the sentiments expressed in a random selection of Tanka (a specific form of Japanese poetry) on six bipolar scales comprising Evaluation (emotional valence), Potency (dominance), and Activity (arousal). The selected Tanka differed with regard to their average formant-dispersion (i.e., the distance between the first and second formant). Corroborating results of a previous study that tested the relation between formant dispersion and emotional tone in German poetry, results suggest that poems with an extremely low average formant dispersion have a significantly higher likelihood of expressing dominance and activity than poems with an extremely high formant dispersion. No significant differences regarding the Evaluation dimension were found.
This article explores the issue of how cultural backgrounds influence the way readers construct m... more This article explores the issue of how cultural backgrounds influence the way readers construct mental images of fictional characters. In an experiment conducted in 2008 in Germany, we found evidence suggesting that readers of fictional narratives draw on their stereotypes when evaluating the personality of a fictional character. Moreover, results of this experiment also suggest that this tendency to focus on (stereo-)typical attributes in the evaluation of characters increases rather than decreases with knowledge about the respective culture. Here, we discuss what cognitive processes presumably underlie these findings and what conclusions can be drawn for the reading process from these theoretical considerations on the influence of readers' cultural beliefs, values, norms, and so on. We further report the results of a second experiment conducted in Japan, which corroborates our previous findings. Finally, we outline suggestions for future endeavors that could make use of our re...
The concept of sound iconicity implies that phonemes are intrinsically associated with non-acoust... more The concept of sound iconicity implies that phonemes are intrinsically associated with non-acoustic phenomena, such as emotional expression, object size or shape, or other perceptual features. In this respect, sound iconicity is related to other forms of cross-modal associations in which stimuli from different sensory modalities are associated with each other due to the implicitly perceived correspondence of their primal features. One prominent example is the association between vowels, categorized according to their place of articulation, and size, with back vowels being associated with bigness and front vowels with smallness. However, to date the relative influence of perceptual and conceptual cognitive processing on this association is not clear. To bridge this gap, three experiments were conducted in which associations between nonsense words and pictures of animals or emotional body postures were tested. In these experiments participants had to infer the relation between visual ...
This paper reports results from an empirical study in synaesthetic sound iconicity, a specific fo... more This paper reports results from an empirical study in synaesthetic sound iconicity, a specific form of phonosemantics defined as implicit and systematic associations of acoustic features of phonemes with non-acoustic phenomena. I argue that acoustic features of phonemes are implicitly associated with one pole or the other (e.g., high level or low level) of bipolar semantic concepts such as activity or dominance. Based on this assumption, it was hypothesized that pseudo-words consisting of plosive consonants and back vowels are associated with the emotion of anger, whereas pseudo-words consisting of sonorant consonants and front vowels are associated with the emotion of fear. This hypothesis was tested in an experimental setting, applying a speeded classification paradigm.
In the current study, we explored the hypothesis that the level of language concreteness influenc... more In the current study, we explored the hypothesis that the level of language concreteness influences readers’ emotional involvement and, thus, fosters the evocation of suspense. To this end, 141 suspenseful texts with comparable content were assessed altogether by 1226 participants on items referring to emotional involvement and suspense. A concreteness score per text was calculated from the ratio between concrete and abstract verbs. Additionally, participants were asked to provide personal data, such as sex, age, or reading habits, and to answer items referring to their ability to feel empathy (trait empathy). Applying a stepwise multiple regression analysis we found that language concreteness is one significant predictor for emotional involvement and suspense (next toaffinity for suspenseandtrait empathy). These results are discussed with respect to their implications on the nature of suspense and on the so-calledparadox of suspense.
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Sep 1, 2015
Sound symbolism is an idea that sounds itself has the impression. In most of the previous psychol... more Sound symbolism is an idea that sounds itself has the impression. In most of the previous psychology and linguistics researches, stimuli were presented visually with alphabets, and subjects directly answered the impression of the sound. The purpose of this study is that establishing a behavioral paradigm applicable to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research when the sound stimulus was presented aurally. In this experiment, we focused on sound symbolism in visual size. Subjects were required to answer visual size difference between standard and target stimulus. Visual stimuli were a gray circle on black background LCD screen. Sound stimuli were /bobo/ and /pipi/, and were assumed to have impression of “bigger” and “smaller,” respectively, according to previous researches. Currently, brain activity of the sound symbolism is examined in MRI using ours previous behavior paradigm. The result suggested that our paradigm is able to use for fMRI study. However, MRI imaging results shows that the location and amount of activity is different by subjects, suggesting the neural substrate of the sound symbolism could vary between individuals. Relationships between the brain differences and individual behavioral differences will be discussed.
This study aimed to test sound-meaning relations in Japanese poetry. To this end, participants as... more This study aimed to test sound-meaning relations in Japanese poetry. To this end, participants assessed the sentiments expressed in a random selection of Tanka (a specific form of Japanese poetry) on six bipolar scales comprising Evaluation (emotional valence), Potency (dominance), and Activity (arousal). The selected Tanka differed with regard to their average formant-dispersion (i.e., the distance between the first and second formant). Corroborating results of a previous study that tested the relation between formant dispersion and emotional tone in German poetry, results suggest that poems with an extremely low average formant dispersion have a significantly higher likelihood of expressing dominance and activity than poems with an extremely high formant dispersion. No significant differences regarding the Evaluation dimension were found.
This article explores the issue of how cultural backgrounds influence the way readers construct m... more This article explores the issue of how cultural backgrounds influence the way readers construct mental images of fictional characters. In an experiment conducted in 2008 in Germany, we found evidence suggesting that readers of fictional narratives draw on their stereotypes when evaluating the personality of a fictional character. Moreover, results of this experiment also suggest that this tendency to focus on (stereo-)typical attributes in the evaluation of characters increases rather than decreases with knowledge about the respective culture. Here, we discuss what cognitive processes presumably underlie these findings and what conclusions can be drawn for the reading process from these theoretical considerations on the influence of readers' cultural beliefs, values, norms, and so on. We further report the results of a second experiment conducted in Japan, which corroborates our previous findings. Finally, we outline suggestions for future endeavors that could make use of our re...
The concept of sound iconicity implies that phonemes are intrinsically associated with non-acoust... more The concept of sound iconicity implies that phonemes are intrinsically associated with non-acoustic phenomena, such as emotional expression, object size or shape, or other perceptual features. In this respect, sound iconicity is related to other forms of cross-modal associations in which stimuli from different sensory modalities are associated with each other due to the implicitly perceived correspondence of their primal features. One prominent example is the association between vowels, categorized according to their place of articulation, and size, with back vowels being associated with bigness and front vowels with smallness. However, to date the relative influence of perceptual and conceptual cognitive processing on this association is not clear. To bridge this gap, three experiments were conducted in which associations between nonsense words and pictures of animals or emotional body postures were tested. In these experiments participants had to infer the relation between visual ...
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