Abstract
Previous findings have shown essential connections between linguistic and gustatory stimuli for people with autism or lexical gustatory synesthesia. We examined the associative learning of novel linguistic forms in Japanese as a native language and tastes (candies and chocolates) for healthy people. Healthy subjects performed four phases: (a) evaluation phase of gustatory features; (b) learning phases of novel linguistic form and gustatory stimulus pairs (G) or novel word forms (W); (c) recognition memory phases linked with G and W; and (d) free recall phase for G and W. In the recognition memory phases, the performance scores of W were higher than those of G, while there was no significant difference between response times of G and W. Additionally, no difference between recall performances in G and W was also shown. A subjective evaluation of gustatory features (sweetness) negatively correlated with the recall score for linguistic forms connected to the gustatory feature, whereas the accuracy rates of the recognition memory phase in G positively correlated with those of the free recall phase in G. Although learning of novel linguistic forms is more efficient than learning of the relationships between novel linguistic forms and tastes, gustatory features influence the free recall performances of linguistic forms linked with the tastes. These results may contribute to future applications to word learning not just for patients, but also healthy people.
Highlights
Most content words are composed of connections between linguistic forms and perceptual and emotional features (e.g., [1,2]), linguistic forms may not be directly linked with perceptually imageable features in function words
In the recognition memory phases of this study, we found that the scores of W were higher than those of G, there was no statistical difference between the response times of G and W in the recognition memory phases and between the proportions of G
The results suggest that the learning of novel linguistic forms on its own is more effective than associative learning of novel linguistic forms and gustatory stimuli in a single day of learning
Summary
Most content words are composed of connections between linguistic forms (e.g., spoken, written, and other forms) and perceptual (e.g., visual, auditory, haptic, gustatory, and olfactory) and emotional features (e.g., [1,2]), linguistic forms may not be directly linked with perceptually imageable features in function words (e.g., the). Another study showed that some factors (e.g., familiarity) could influence the learning of associations between words and meanings [15]. The research has mainly scrutinized learning of linguistic forms and pictorial, auditory, or haptic stimuli, whereas few studies have investigated learning of associations between linguistic forms and other sensory referents, including gustatory features. Some studies report that gustatory referents effectively contribute to associative learning among multisensory features for people with autism or developmental disabilities (e.g., [19,20,21,22]), since the learning of linguistic and gustatory stimuli helps with their word
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More From: European Journal of Investigation in Health, Psychology and Education
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