Can sequencing of articulation ease explain the in–out effect? A preregistered test

ABSTRACT

Words whose consonantal articulation places move from the front of the mouth to the back (e.g. BADAKA; inward) receive more positive evaluations than words whose consonantal articulation places move from the back of the mouth to the front (e.g. KADABA; outward). This in–out effect has a variety of affective, cognitive, and even behavioural consequences, but its underlying mechanisms remain elusive. Most recently, a linguistic explanation has been proposed applying the linguistic easy-first account and the so-called labial-coronal effect from developmental speech research and phonology to the in–out effect: Labials (front) are easier to process than coronals (middle); and people prefer easy followed by harder motor components. Disentangling consonantal articulation direction and articulation place, the present three preregistered experiments (total N = 1012) found in–out effects for coronal-dorsal (back), and labial-dorsal articulation places. Critically, no in–out effect emerged for labial-coronal articulation places. Thus, the in–out effect is unlikely an instantiation of easy first.

KEYWORDS:

• Articulation
• emotion
• sequence planning
• language
• motor control

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 There are of course more fine-grained distinctions of the anatomical articulation places along the sagittal lane, see, e.g., Topolinski and Boecker (2016a). Also, consonantal articulation places are not perfectly correlated with articulatory complexity, and articulatory complexity of consonants depends on multiple factors other than the mere articulation place (such as the surrounding vowels). However, because the in-out effect is defined as an effect of different orders of consonantal articulation places (e.g., labial-coronal), a comprehensive explanation of the in-out effect must also be based on differences in articulatory complexity between different orders of consonantal articulation places. Thus, reducing articulatory complexity to global differences between labial, coronal, and dorsal consonants is necessary in order to explain the in-out effect with an easy-first account.

2 Note that in a 2 × 3 within-subjects design the interaction has the same degrees of freedom and thus requires the same power analysis as the main effect in a 1 × 3 design.

3 Note that in contrast to English in German phonation the R is predominantly a uvular, that is, articulated in the back of the mouth.

4 A preregistered analysis including real words led to very similar results. These analyses are thus only provided in the OSF directory.