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PSYCHOSEMANTIC RESEARCH IN VISUAL PERCEPTION OF CROSS-LINGUISTIC SOUND-ICONISM BY RUSSIAN SPEAKERS OF ENGLISH: A LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE // Tomsk State Pedagogical University Bulletin. 2018. Issue 4 (193). P. 147-153

Beginning with a brief survey of the latest developments in the field of phonosemantics the article looks into psychological basis of sound iconism by investigating the reactions of Russian speakers to English sound-iconic words. The experiment with the use of the Lexical Decision method is described and the results are tabled. The subjects – 90 Russian learners of English at different proficiency levels – were asked to identify as words or non-words stimuli of three types: a) sound-iconic English words, b) non-iconic (neutral) English words and c) quasi-words. All stimuli were presented visually in random sequences in a compressed time frame. The criteria for selecting the stimuli were thoroughly elaborated. The results of the experiment show a statistically veritable delay in identifying the sound-iconic stimuli as words. It remained constant, regardless of the English language proficiency level of the participants. Presumably, the cognitive complexity of the task increased because of a certain interference between the two ways of information processing: abstract-conceptual and sensory-symbolic. This influenced the speed and accuracy of word recognition. Another factor leading to errors might stem from the fact that the sound forms of the English visual stimuli, as they were reproduced by the subjects in their inner speech, did not coincide with their associations in Russian, which made them «think twice» before answering.

Keywords: sound-iconism, lexical decision, psychosemantics, phonosemantics, Russian-English bilinguals, visual perception