Bouba/kiki effect
The bouba/kiki effect, or kiki/bouba effect, is a non-arbitrary
Research
Discovery
This effect was first observed by Georgian psychologist Dimitri Uznadze in a 1924 paper.[4][non-primary source needed] He conducted an experiment with 10 participants who were given a list with nonsense words, shown six drawings for five seconds each, then instructed to pick a name for the drawing from the list of given words. He describes the different "strategies" participants developed to match words to drawings and quotes their reasoning. He also describes situations where participants described very specific forms that they associated with a nonsense word, without reference to the shown drawings. He develops a theory of four factors that influence the way names for objects are decided.
In total, there were 42 words. For one particular drawing, 45% picked the same word. For three others, the percentages were 40%. Uznadze points out that this is significantly more overlap than one could expect, given the high number of possible words. He speculates that there must therefore be certain regularities "which the human soul follows in the process of name-giving".
German American psychologist Wolfgang Köhler referred to Uznadze's experiment in a 1929 book[5] which showed two forms and asked readers which shape was called "takete" and which was called "maluma". Although he does not say so outright, Köhler implies that there is a strong preference to pair the jagged shape with "takete" and the rounded shape with "maluma".[6]
Extension to other contexts
In 2001, V. S. Ramachandran and Edward Hubbard repeated Köhler's experiment using the words "kiki" and "bouba" and asked American college undergraduates and Tamil speakers in India, "Which of these shapes is bouba and which is kiki?" In both groups, 95% to 98% selected the curvy shape as "bouba" and the jagged one as "kiki", suggesting that the human brain somehow attaches abstract meanings to the shapes and sounds consistently.[7][failed verification – see discussion]
Daphne Maurer and colleagues showed that even children as young as 21⁄2 years old may show this preference.[8] More recent work by Ozge Ozturk and colleagues in 2013 showed that even 4-month-old infants have the same sound–shape mapping biases as adults and toddlers.[9] Infants are able to differentiate between congruent trials (pairing an angular shape with "kiki" or a curvy shape with "bubu") and incongruent trials (pairing a curvy shape with "kiki" or an angular shape with "bubu"). Infants looked longer at incongruent pairings than at congruent pairings. Infants' mapping was based on the combination of consonants and vowels in the words, and neither consonants nor vowels alone sufficed for mapping. These results suggest that some sound–shape mappings precede language learning, and may in fact aid in language learning by establishing a basis for matching labels to referents and narrowing the hypothesis space for young infants. Adults in this study, like infants, used a combination of consonant and vowel information to match the labels they heard with the shapes they saw. However, this was not the only strategy that was available to them. Adults, unlike infants, were also able to use consonant information alone and vowel information alone to match the labels to the shapes, albeit less frequently than the consonant–vowel combination. When vowels and consonants were put in conflict, adults used consonants more often than vowels.
The effect has also been shown to emerge in other contexts, such as when words are paired with evaluative meanings (with "bouba" words associated with positive concepts and "kiki" words associated with negative concepts)[10] or when the words to be paired are existing first names, suggesting that some familiarity with the linguistic stimuli does not eliminate the effect. A study showed that individuals will pair names such as "Molly" with round silhouettes, and names such as "Kate" with sharp silhouettes. Moreover, individuals will associate different personality traits with either group of names (e.g., easygoingness with "round names"; determination with "sharp names"). This may hint at a role of abstract concepts in the effect.[11]
Contexts where the effect is smaller or absent
Other research suggests that this effect does not occur in all communities,[12] and it appears that the effect breaks if the sounds do not make licit words in the language.[13] The bouba/kiki effect seems to be dependent on a long sensitive period, with high visual capacities in childhood being necessary for its typical development. Although the congenitally blind have been reported to show a bouba/kiki effect, they show a much smaller one for touched shapes than sighted individuals do for visual shapes.[14][15]
Languages where the effect is smaller or absent
Studies show that speakers of certain languages have notably failed to show the effect, namely including Mandarin Chinese, Turkish, and Romanian.[1]
Neuroscience
In 2019, Nathan Peiffer-Smadja and Laurent Cohen published the first study using
Implications for understanding language
Ramachandran and Hubbard suggest that the kiki/bouba effect has implications for the evolution of language, because it suggests that the naming of objects is not completely arbitrary.
See also
References
- ^ PMID 34775818.
- ^ S2CID 54164828.
- ProQuest 2428279185.
- ^ Dimitri Usnadze. "Ein experimenteller Beitrag zum Problem der psychologischen Grundlagen der Namengebung" (PDF). bard.edu (in German). Retrieved 18 April 2023.
- ^ Köhler, Wolfgang (1929). Gestalt Psychology. New York: Liveright.
- ^ Köhler, Wolfgang (1947). Gestalt Psychology (2nd ed.). New York: Liveright. p. 133.
- ^ a b Ramachandran, V.S. & Hubbard, E.M. (2001). "Synaesthesia: A window into perception, thought and language" (PDF). Journal of Consciousness Studies. 8 (12): 3–34. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-08-13. Retrieved 2011-10-20.
- S2CID 7297731. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2011-07-23. Retrieved 2011-06-19.
- S2CID 7274252. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2020-08-17. Retrieved 2019-09-24.
- .
- PMID 26016856.
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- PMID 28890777.
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- ISBN 978-0-9911967-2-2. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2019-02-09. Retrieved 2019-02-08.
- ^ Bross, Fabian (2018). "Cognitive associations between vowel length and object size: A new feature contributing to a bouba/kiki effect". In Belz, M.; Mooshammer, C.; Fuchs, S.; Jannedy, S.; Rasskazova, O.; Zygis, M. (eds.). Proceedings of the Conference on Phonetics & Phonology in German-Speaking Countries. Vol. 13. Berlin: Humbold University. pp. 17–20.
- ^ Gómez Milán, E.; Iborra, O.; de Córdoba, M.J.; Juárez-Ramos, V.; Rodríguez Artacho, M.A.; Rubio, J.L. (2013). "The Kiki-Bouba effect: A case of personification and ideaesthesia". Journal of Consciousness Studies. 20 (1–2): 84–102.
- ^ Nikolić, Danko (2009). "Is synaesthesia actually ideaestesia? An inquiry into the nature of the phenomenon" (PDF). Proceedings of the Third International Congress on Synaesthesia, Science & Art.