Analyses of sensory-relevance of adjective pairs frequently used in semantic differential studies
Poster Presentation

Jiro Gyoba
Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Arts ans Letters, Tohoku University

Miho Suzuki
Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Arts ans Letters, Tohoku University

Hideaki Kawabata
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Education, Kagoshima University

Hiroshi Yamagichi
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Iwate University

Hiroshi Komatsu
Department of Psychology, Tohoku Fukushi University

     Abstract ID Number: 84
     Full text: PDF
     Last modified: June 24, 2005

Abstract
The semantic differential (SD) method developed by C.E. Osgood has been widely used and found to be very useful for measuring the affective contents of various stimuli. As Osgood pointed out, the affective reaction system generating responses for adjectives in the SD method is assumed to be deeply based on synaesthetic processing. However, the synaesthetic properties related to the adjectives used in the SD method have not undergone precise quantitative analyses. In the present study, three hundred participants were asked to rate the relevance of eighty adjective pairs to various sensory modalities using 7-point scale. Consequently, we found that the adjective pairs can be classified into the following groups. One can be regarded as multi-sensory adjectives that show generally higher relevance magnitudes to various modalities and have strong relations to the Evaluation factor. The other groups of adjectives show high relevance to specific modalities such as tactile or kinesthetic sensation and contain the properties associated with the Potency or the Activity factor. These results were discussed in relation to the brain activities during the SD task that were measured by the near-infrared spectroscopy (Suzuki, Gyoba, and Sakuta, 2005).