I recently established the gleam-glum effect confirming in both English and Mandarin that words with the /i/ vowel-sound (like “gleam”) are rated more emotionally positive than matched words with the /ʌ/ vowel-sound (like “glum”). Here I confirm that these vowel sounds also influence the semantic perception of monosyllabic pseudo-words. In Experiment 1, 100 participants rated 50 individual /i/ monosyllabic pseudo-words (like “zeech”) as significantly more positive than 50 matched /ʌ/ pseudo-words (like “zuch”), replicating my previous findings with real words. Experiment 2 assessed the gleam-glum effect on pseudo-words using a forced-choice task. Participants (n = 148) were presented with the 50 pairs of pseudo-words used in Experiment 1 and tasked to guess the most likely meaning of each pseudo-word by matching them with one of two meaning words that were either extremely positive or extremely negative in affective valence (Warriner et al., 2013). I found a remarkably robust effect in which every one of the 50 pseudo-word pairs was on average more likely to have the /i/ word matched with the positive meaning word and /ʌ/ word with the negative one (exact binomial test, p < .001, z = 7.94). The findings confirm that the gleam-glum effect facilitates bootstrapping meaning of words from their pronunciations. These findings coupled with previous real word findings (Yu et al., in press), showing not only that the effect encompasses the entire English lexicon but can also be explained with an embodied facial musculature mechanism, is consistent with the idea that sound symbolism may shape vocabulary use of a language over time by influencing semantic perception.

Neuroscientific research has verified that humans have specialized brain areas used in the production and perception of language. It is speculated that these brain areas may also be involved in the perception and expression of emotions. A recent study supports the idea of an auditory equivalent to visually recognizable emotions, finding that the words containing the phoneme /i:/ as in “beat” were rated more positively and those with the phoneme /^/ as in “but” were rated more negatively. It was theorized that these results support that the same facial musculature used in producing visually recognizable expressions also favors specific phonemic sounds. The present study replicates this prior research using a new methodology in which participants matched verbalized monosyllabic nonsense pseudo-words to positive or negative cartoon pictures. We hypothesized that pseudo-words containing the sounds /i:/ would be matched with pictures that are more emotionally positive and ones containing the sounds /^/ would be matched with pictures that are more negative. Data collected from 119 undergraduate student volunteers from a Southwestern public university confirmed our hypotheses and exhibit the same pattern found in previous research supporting that specific vowel phonemes are matched with emotional valence. Our findings are the first to confirm this phoneme-emotion relationship with verbalized sounds and pictures. The results support the idea that the musculature associated with positive and negative facial expressions also favors production of specific phonemic sounds that listeners recognize and associate with specific emotions.

This study expands on findings by Yu, McBeath, & Glenberg (2019) which demonstrated a relationship between the pronunciation of English vowel phonemes and emotional valence due to embodied cognition. That study found that single syllable words containing the phoneme /i:/ (as in “gleam”) were reliably rated as more positive than matched words containing the phoneme /ʌ/ (as in “glum”). The findings are consistent with the idea that the facial musculature when smiling is more conducive to making the /i:/ sound, while that of frowning or grimacing is more conducive to making the /ʌ/ sound. That study only compared the phonemes /i:/ and /ʌ/, which are opposite extremes of phoneme similarity (second formant frequency). The present study expands on this finding by testing the relative emotional valence ratings of matched single-syllable words containing /i:/ vs /ʌ/ plus two intermediate phonemes, /ɪ/ (as in “bit”), and /ɔ/ (as in “bought”). The new findings replicate the Gleam-Glum effect, and provide support for a weak ordering hypothesis for the intermediate phonemes, but not a strong ordering. The weak ordering hypothesis is that single-syllable words containing a middle vowel phoneme that is intermediate to /i:/ and /ʌ/ in musculature and acoustic features are also generally rated as intermediate in emotional valence. The strong ordering hypothesis is that the intermediate phonemes are each differentially rated in emotional valance in precisely the same order as determined acoustically. The pattern of results found is consistent with the Russell Circumplex Model of emotion at a cursory level, but individual emotions do not fully conform to a simple 2-D model that generalizes to similarity judgments of phonemes. Nevertheless, the work supports that facial musculature associated with visually discernible emotions generally relates to a phonetic acoustic continuum.

Previous research has indicated that certain breeds of dogs stay longer in shelters than others; however exactly how breed perception and identification influences potential adopters' decisions remains unclear. Current dog breed identification practices in animal shelters are often based upon information supplied by the relinquishing owner, or staff determination based on the dog's phenotype. However discrepancies have been found between breed identification as typically assessed by welfare agencies and the outcome of DNA analysis. In Study 1, the perceived behavioral and adoptability characteristics of a pit-bull-type dog were compared with those of a Labrador Retriever and Border Collie. How the addition of a human handler influenced those perceptions was also assessed. In Study 2, lengths of stay and perceived attractiveness of dogs that were labeled as pit bull breeds to dogs that were phenotypically similar but were labeled as another breed at an animal shelter were compared. The latter dogs were called "lookalikes." In Study 3, perceived attractiveness in video recordings of pit-bull-type dogs and lookalikes with and without breed labels were compared. Lastly, data from an animal shelter that ceased applying breed labeling on kennels was analyzed, and lengths of stay and outcomes for all dog breeds, including pit bulls, before and after the change in labeling practice were compared. In total, these findings suggest that breed labeling influences potential adopters' perceptions and decision-making. Given the inherent complexity of breed assignment based on morphology coupled with negative breed perceptions, removing breed labels is a relatively low-cost strategy that will likely improve outcomes for dogs in animal shelters.

The present study explores the role of motion in the perception of form from dynamic occlusion, employing color to help isolate the contributions of both visual pathways. Although the cells that respond to color cues in the environment usually feed into the ventral stream, humans can perceive motion based on chromatic cues. The current study was designed to use grey, green, and red stimuli to successively limit the amount of information available to the dorsal stream pathway, while providing roughly equal information to the ventral system. Twenty-one participants identified shapes that were presented in grey, green, and red and were defined by dynamic occlusion. The shapes were then presented again in a static condition where the maximum occlusions were presented as before, but without motion. Results showed an interaction between the motion and static conditions in that when the speed of presentation increased, performance in the motion conditions became significantly less accurate than in the static conditions. The grey and green motion conditions crossed static performance at the same point, whereas the red motion condition crossed at a much slower speed. These data are consistent with a model of neural processing in which the main visual systems share information. Moreover, they support the notion that presenting stimuli in specific colors may help isolate perceptual pathways for scientific investigation. Given the potential for chromatic cues to target specific visual systems in the performance of dynamic object recognition, exploring these perceptual parameters may help our understanding of human visual processing.