The cross-linguistic comparison of perceptual strength norms for Korean, English and L2 English

Jonghyun Lee; Jeong-Ah Shin

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1188909

The cross-linguistic comparison of perceptual strength norms for Korean, English and L2 English

Front Psychol. 2023 Jul 19:14:1188909. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1188909. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Jonghyun Lee¹, Jeong-Ah Shin²

Affiliations

¹ Department of English Language and Literature, College of Humanities, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
² Department of English Language and Literature, College of Humanities, Dongguk University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.

Abstract

This study aimed to establish perceptual strength norms for 1,000 words in the languages of Korean, English, and L2 English, in order to investigate the similarity and difference across languages as well as the influence of the environment on semantic processing. The perceptual strength norms, which are a collection of word profiles that summarize how a word is experienced through different sensory modalities including the five common senses and interoception, provide a valuable tool for testing embodiment cognition theory. The results of this study demonstrated that language users had parallel sensory experiences with concepts, and that L2 learners were also able to associate their sensory experiences with linguistic concepts. Additionally, the results highlighted the importance of incorporating interoception as a sensory modality in the development of perceptual strength norms, as it had a negative correlation with both vision and concreteness. This study was the first to establish norms for Korean and L2 English and directly compare languages using the identical and translation-equivalent word list.

Keywords: abstract concept; conceptualization; cross-linguistic; embodiment cognition; grounded cognition; interoception; perceptual strength; second language processing.