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Mutsumi Imai

Mutsumi Imai

D-Index & Metrics

Psychology

D-Index
34
Citations
6592
World Ranking
10092
National Ranking
30

Overview

Mutsumi Imai is affiliated with Keio University in Japan and conducts research primarily in the field of Psychology, with a focus on Experimental and Cognitive Psychology as well as Developmental and Educational Psychology. Their work addresses a range of topics including categorization, perception, and language, language, metaphor, and cognition, multisensory perception and integration, language development and disorders, child and animal learning development, hearing impairment and communication, and reading and literacy development.

Their recent publications include:

  • The contingency symmetry bias (affirming the consequent fallacy) as a prerequisite for word learning: A comparative study of pre-linguistic human infants and chimpanzees, 2021, Cognition
  • Acquisition of the Meaning of the Word Orange Requires Understanding of the Meanings of Red, Pink, and Purple: Constructing a Lexicon as a Connected System, 2020, Cognitive Science
  • Does sound symbolism need sound?: The role of articulatory movement in detecting iconicity between sound and meaning, 2025, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
  • From green to turquoise: Exploring age and socioeconomic status in the acquisition of color terms, 2022, First Language
  • Examining children's verb learning in the United States and Japan: Do comparisons help?, 2024, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Frequent coauthors in Imai's research include:

  • Kimi Akita
  • Noburo Saji
  • Masato Ohba
  • Junko Kanero
  • Chizuko Murai

Their research has been published across various venues, prominently in:

  • Cognition
  • Cognitive Science
  • The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
  • Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
  • First Language

Best Publications

  • A Cross-Linguistic Study of Early Word Meaning: Universal Ontology and Linguistic Influence.

    Mutsumi Imai;Dedre Gentner

  • Sound symbolism facilitates early verb learning.

    Mutsumi Imai;Sotaro Kita;Miho Nagumo;Hiroyuki Okada

  • The sound symbolism bootstrapping hypothesis for language acquisition and language evolution

    Mutsumi Imai;Sotaro Kita

  • As time goes by: Evidence for two systems in processing space → time metaphors

    Dedre Gentner;Mutsumi Imai;Lera Boroditsky

  • Children's Theories of Word Meaning: The Role of Shape Similarity in Early Acquisition

    Mutsumi Imai;Dedre Gentner;Nobuko Uchida

  • Novel Noun and Verb Learning in Chinese-, English-, and Japanese-Speaking Children.

    Mutsumi Imai;Lianjing Li;Etsuko Haryu;Hiroyuki Okada

  • Sound symbolism scaffolds language development in preverbal infants

    Michiko Asano;Mutsumi Imai;Sotaro Kita;Keiichi Kitajo

  • Japanese sound symbolism facilitates word learning in English speaking children

    Katerina Kantartzis;Mutsumi Imai;Sotaro Kita

  • Mapping novel nouns and verbs onto dynamic action events: Are verb meanings easier to learn than noun meanings for Japanese children?

    Mutsumi Imai;Etsuko Haryu;Hiroyuki Okada

  • Sound Symbolism Facilitates Word Learning in 14-Month-Olds

    Mutsumi Imai;Michiko Miyazaki;H. Henny Yeung;Shohei Hidaka

  • The relation between language, culture, and thought

    Mutsumi Imai;Junko Kanero;Takahiko Masuda

  • Talking About Walking Biomechanics and the Language of Locomotion

    Barbara C. Malt;Silvia Gennari;Mutsumi Imai;Eef Ameel

  • On the equivalence of superordinate concepts

    Edward J. Wisniewski;Mutsumi Imai;Lyman Casey

  • Scope of linguistic influence: does a classifier system alter object concepts?

    Henrik Saalbach;Mutsumi Imai

  • A developmental shift from similar to language-specific strategies in verb acquisition: A comparison of English, Spanish, and Japanese

    Mandy J. Maguire;Kathy Hirsh-Pasek;Roberta Michnick Golinkoff;Mutsumi Imai

  • Language-relative construal of individuation constrained by universal ontology: Revisiting language universals and linguistic relativity

    Mutsumi Imai;Reiko Mazuka

  • How sound symbolism is processed in the brain: a study on Japanese mimetic words.

    Junko Kanero;Mutsumi Imai;Jiro Okuda;Hiroyuki Okada

  • Separating the chaff from the oats: Evidence for a conceptual distinction between count noun and mass noun aggregates

    Erica L Middleton;Edward J Wisniewski;Kelly A Trindel;Mutsumi Imai

  • Re-evaluating linguistic relativity: Language-specific categories and the role of universal ontological knowledge in the construal of individuation

    Mutsumi Imai;Reiko Mazuka

  • Is the future always ahead? Evidence for system-mappings in understanding space-time metaphors

    Dedre Gentner;Mutsumi Imai

  • Do words reveal concepts

    Barbara C. Malt;Eef Ameel;Silvia Gennari;Mutsumi Imai

Frequent Co-Authors

Sotaro Kita
Sotaro Kita University of Warwick
Barbara C. Malt
Barbara C. Malt Lehigh University
Asifa Majid
Asifa Majid University of York
Dedre Gentner
Dedre Gentner Northwestern University
Guillaume Thierry
Guillaume Thierry Bangor University
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek Temple University
Roberta Michnick Golinkoff
Roberta Michnick Golinkoff University of Delaware
Lera Boroditsky
Lera Boroditsky University of California, San Diego
Richard C. Anderson
Richard C. Anderson University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Hua Shu
Hua Shu Beijing Normal University

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