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Nonsense syllables are meaningless but pronounceable combinations of letters, commonly used in cognitive psychology experiments. They have association values that measure the level of meaning people assign to them. Nonsense syllables are studied in relation to human learning and memory, including foreign name learning and infant language acquisition.
A nonsense syllable is a string of letters that equals a single meaningless syllable. The word “one”, although it is only a syllable, is not nonsense because it is a word that conveys meaning. The syllable “kuq”, on the other hand, at least in the English language, is a nonsense syllable because it is not a word and does not convey any meaning. In general, nonsense syllables are at least “similar words,” as they can be pronounced phonetically. Nonsense syllables are commonly used in psychological experiments involving language, comprehension, and memory, especially in the area of cognitive psychology.
In general, a nonsense syllable is designed to be devoid of any kind of meaning but still be pronounceable. In general, these syllables consist of three letters: a consonant followed by a vowel followed by another consonant. Such letter combinations are, in almost all cases, pronounceable, and many of these combinations have no meaning. Similar constructions are also used, such as a vowel followed by a consonant followed by a vowel, and even some constructions with four or more letters. Interestingly, despite the fact that a nonsense syllable is created to have no explicit meaning within language, cognitive psychology experiments have indicated that people associate meaning with many of these syllables.
The level of meaning people assign to nonsense syllables is quantified through the “association value.” A variety of different types of experiments in cognitive science are used to measure the association value of a given syllable. In one type of test, the test subject is simply asked to answer “yes” or “no” when asked whether or not a nonsense syllable has meaning. In another, the test subject is given a set amount of time to write a list of all the words he associates with a given nonsense syllable. In both cases, an association value is calculated based on the collected results of a large body of test subjects.
Nonsense syllables are often studied in relation to human learning and memory. The learning and memory of foreign names, for example, are tied to nonsense syllables, as foreign names are often composed of syllables with low association values. Some elements of infant learning can also be studied with nonsense syllables. In the “wug test,” for example, a child is asked to pronounce the plural of the nonsense syllable “wug.” His pronunciation of the plural, which could be “two wug,” “two wugz,” “two wugses,” “two wug-ez,” or something else, demonstrates his understanding of plural constructions in the English language.
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