The bouba-kiki effect is the tendency for people to consistently match certain speech sounds with certain visual shapes: rounded, soft-sounding words such as bouba are paired with rounded shapes, while sharp, hard-sounding words such as kiki are paired with jagged, spiky shapes. First documented in the 1920s, the association has since been found across many different cultures and languages, in age groups from infants to adults, and even among people who have been blind from birth, suggesting it reflects a basic feature of how the human mind links sound to form.
Facts
Core ClaimThe bouba-kiki effect, also called the takete-maluma phenomenon, is a non-arbitrary mental association between certain speech sounds and certain visual shapes: people tend to match soft-sounding words such as bouba with rounded shapes and hard-sounding words such as kiki with spiky shapes. 1 First Described Year Replication Standing Classification
Type of Phenomenon Connections
In Branch
Source Bouba/kiki effect, Wikipedia
Sources
1. Bouba/kiki effect, Wikipedia
Lead section, first paragraph
is a non-arbitrary mental association between certain speech sounds and certain visual shapes
Discovery section
This effect was first observed by Georgian psychologist Dimitri Uznadze in a 1924 paper.
In Branch: Psycholinguistics, Lead section
The bouba-kiki effect ( BOO-bə KEE-kee), or takete-maluma phenomenon, is a non-arbitrary mental association between certain speech sounds and certain visual shapes.
View the Source2. FORRT: FORRT Replications and Reversals
FORRTEntry: Bouba/kiki effectQuote, Entry: Bouba/kiki effect
Bouba/kiki effect (sound symbolism). When presented with sounds (e.g., the words “bouba” and “kiki”) and visual objects (e.g., a curvy shape and a spiky shape), humans make non-arbitrary mappings between sounds and objects (e.g., the curvy shape is consistently called “bouba”). Statistics Status: replicated
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