Analyzing the factor structure and the sensory-relevance of impressions produced by words and drawings

The impressions of words and drawings that represented the same concepts (joy, anger, tranquility, etc.) were examined by the semantic differential technique. In the word (W) condition where the participants were presented with only the word stimuli, two factors (Evaluation and Activity) were extracted. By contrast, in the drawing (D) condition where the participants only saw the drawings, three factors (Evaluation, Activity, and Potency) were extracted and the potency factor was found to have large factor loadings for the adjective-pairs containing high relevance to tactile sensation. The same tendencies were found in the drawing + word (DW) condition where the drawings and the words were presented simultaneously. These results revealed that the factor structure in the W condition differed from those in the D and the DW conditions, and that the drawings aroused tactile sensations. Further analysis in the evaluation factor implied that the impressions produced in the DW condition had unique characters that could not be reduced to those in the W and the D conditions.