Research into sound-symbolism has shown that people can consistently associate certain pseudo-words with certain referents; for instance, pseudo-words with rounded vowels and sonorant consonants are linked to round shapes, while pseudowords with unrounded vowels and obstruents (with a noncontinuous airflow), are associated with sharp shapes. Such sound-symbolic associations have been proposed to arise from cross-modal abstraction processes. Here we assess the link between sound-symbolism and cross-modal abstraction by testing dyslexic individuals’ ability to make sound-symbolic associations. Dyslexic individuals are known to have deficiencies in cross-modal processing. We find that dyslexic individuals are impaired in their ability to make sound-symbolic associations relative to the controls. Our results shed light on the cognitive underpinnings of sound-symbolism by providing novel evidence for the role —and disruptability— of cross-modal abstraction processes in sound-symbolic e?ects.

The ‘sense of agency’—the feeling of doing—is a phenomenological experience that cannot be taken for granted in infants. Researching the development of this phenomenon hinges on its conceptualization. Although it may seem natural to ask “When do infants have sense of agency?”, this binary view on the presence (or absence) of a sense of agency seems conceptually problematic. Cognitive phenomenological research reveals that sense of agency is a complex set of agentive experiences with different contents (e.g. ‘the experience of acting’, ‘the experience of volition’) that are often conflated. Given that different contents presuppose different representational capacities, developmental psychology may better target the question “What senses of agency can infants have at different developmental stages?” We show how this re-conceptualization impacts the interpretation of existing empirical findings in infant research, and how it can improve our understanding of the developmental trajectory of infants’ experiences of agency.