Danièle Dubois: Cognitive Auditory Categories Between Odors and Colors: A Psycholinguistic Approach

Danièle Dubois is a researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), University of Paris VI.

ABSTRACT:
I will present some results from our explorations of cognitive properties of complex acoustic phenomena. The psycholinguistic approach was first elaborated to study soundscapes, and has been recently further developed to investigate the quality of musical instruments and voices. Results from free categorization tasks associated with linguistic discourse analysis of real life experiences show that a "single" physical phenomenon can give rise to various cognitive objects, depending on semiotic processes involved and linguistic resources available. This leads us to distinguish two types of conceptualizations of acoustic phenomena, which can either be processed as "noises" or as"sounds". Noises are ascribed to sources and lexicalized as such, together with a dimension of unpleasantness. They are processed either as part of a meaningful event indicating the presence of objects of the world (sources). Sounds, on the other hand, are perceived and lexicalized as intentionally produced artifacts, and processed in a more autonomous manner along dimensions abstracted from the source and from the context of occurrence. Compared with other sensory modes, these results suggest that noises are conceptualized as effects of the world on the subject, like odors, in contrast with sounds which are, like colors, conceptualized as objects of the worlds. This diversity of cognitive representations entails empirical consequences and suggests the challenge of a "reverse" paradigm for studying soundscapes, shifting from psychophysics to semiophysics. This psycholinguistic approach defines a theoretical and methodological framework to investigate sound quality.

About Danièle Dubois:
Danièle Dubois is a senior research scientist in psycholinguistics at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique in Paris, where she directs the Laboratory "Langages, Cognitions et Pratiques". Her laboratory brings together linguists and psychologists to investigate relationships between language and cognition, and more particularly the linguistic and cognitive processes involved in categorization. D.Dubois is involved in various interdisciplinarity programs on qualitative evaluation (e.g. sound quality, comfort) in collaboration with biologists, computer scientists and industrial partners. D. Dubois earned her Ph.D in Psycholinguistics from the University of Paris VIII and did post-doctoral training at University of California San Diego. She is a member of the Cognitive Science Society.

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