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Bouba/Kiki Effect

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Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect

#11

Post by schoen »

Exuma wrote: post #6

Wow!!! I've thought my whole life about this at random moments....... when I was a very little kid, maybe 5-10 I used to say certain words and I would get a very intense visualization that would go along with it. The visualization was never of the actual object, but some bizarre shape or pattern, and it would always be the same when I would say that word. For example the world "girl" would visualize a head of hair wi…

What you experienced might also be more similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia, since the bouba/kiki experiments are mostly about people judging the quality of a match between sounds and pre-prepared images, rather than having them spontaneously visualize images based on the sounds.

Many synesthetes experience a consistent match between words or sounds and visualizations, but not necessarily the same pairing that other people do.

Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect

#12

Post by silicon2401 »

wyager wrote: post #8

Bouba/Kiki are onomatopoeia for the sounds objects of those shapes are liable to make if you drop them or otherwise physically interact with them. Bouba is probably soft/flexible and Kiki is probably hard/rigid.

There is no inherent association with shape and substance. Leaves/flowers can be pointy like the kiki shape and fall softly and limply, whereas rocks are ubiquitous, round, and solid.

Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect

#13

Post by Tade0 »

silicon2401 wrote: post #12
wyager wrote: post #8

Bouba/Kiki are onomatopoeia for the sounds objects of those shapes are liable to make if you drop them or otherwise physically interact with them. Bouba is probably soft/flexible and Kiki is probably hard/rigid.

There is no inherent association with shape and substance. Leaves/flowers can be pointy like the kiki shape and fall softly and limply, whereas rocks are ubiquitous, round, and solid.

Perhaps it's the sound they make when they're eaten?

Bouba sounds like something that doesn't require a lot of chewing.

Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect

#14

Post by P-ala-din »

gfaure wrote: post #4

There's a Tom Scott video about this with some further academic references: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TDIAObsqcs Bouba/kiki is most likely a specific instance of the more general notion of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_symbolism . Another well-known cross-linguistic association is the one between front vowels and small objects on one hand, and back vowels and large objects on the other.

I just watched this video a few hours ago because youtube randomly recommended it to me.

I wonder if it's just the Baader–Meinhof effect or if the post was caused by the same youtube algorithm.

Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect

#15

Post by anyfoo »

Exuma wrote: post #6

Wow!!! I've thought my whole life about this at random moments....... when I was a very little kid, maybe 5-10 I used to say certain words and I would get a very intense visualization that would go along with it. The visualization was never of the actual object, but some bizarre shape or pattern, and it would always be the same when I would say that word. For example the world "girl" would visualize a head of hair wi…

Makes me wonder if young children generally have some form of Synesthesia, when the brain still develops, that then subsides in most adults.

While I had practically forgotten it until you mentioned it, I had similar experiences, for example the french song "au clair de la lune" always evoked the same, very vivid (but rather abstract) picture in my mind. To my child mind, it was so intense that the song was that picture to me.

Nowadays this doesn't happen...

Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect

#16

Post by jxramos »

I've wondered if languages which "score" well in leveraging this sort of mapping just make it easier to juggle complex subjects by using more "efficient" parts of our mental stack that position conversation to go deeper on any point of interest just because it's less energy intensive or something along those lines. Something akin to a mental locality of concepts if you will. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect#Implications...

Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect

#17

Post by jxramos »

jxramos wrote: post #16

I've wondered if languages which "score" well in leveraging this sort of mapping just make it easier to juggle complex subjects by using more "efficient" parts of our mental stack that position conversation to go deeper on any point of interest just because it's less energy intensive or something along those lines. Something akin to a mental locality of concepts if you will. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_e…

ps it's a joy to watch VS Ramachandran get excited about synesthesia, definitely worth hunting down videos of him on YouTube.

Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect

#18

Post by arexxbifs »

Tade0 wrote: post #13
silicon2401 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no inherent association with shape and substance. Leaves/flowers can be pointy like the kiki shape and fall softly and limply, whereas rocks are ubiquitous, round, and solid.

Perhaps it's the sound they make when they're eaten? Bouba sounds like something that doesn't require a lot of chewing.

Heston Blumenthal once likened nachos to Kiki and sourcream to Bouba when picking condiments for chili.

Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect

#19

Post by matsemann »

jvanderbot wrote: post #7

This is how I remember numbers, spelling, and names sometimes. A sequence of numbers has a nice plot / wave to it. I can't say my mapping from these categories to shapes generalizes for anyone else and it hasn't made me particularly good at memory competitions. It's just how it works. Also, memorizing a couple of credit card's information has saved me so much time -- highly recommended.

A Norwegian newspaper did a deep dive a few years ago about how people visualize the year. Crazy how different people are, I ended up in discussions with many people during that week hearing lots of different variations. Your description of waves reminded me about it, since it's almost how I view time. Like a sinus wave where the valley is the summer. But zoomable with smaller waves so the months and weeks also are waves on top of the big wave.

https://nrkbeta.no/2018/01/01/this-is-what-the-year-actually...

Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect

#20

Post by kanbara »

P-ala-din wrote: post #14
gfaure wrote: post #4

There's a Tom Scott video about this with some further academic references: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TDIAObsqcs Bouba/kiki is most likely a specific instance of the more general notion of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_symbolism . Another well-known cross-linguistic association is the one between front vowels and small objects on one hand, and back vowels and large objects on the other.

I just watched this video a few hours ago because youtube randomly recommended it to me. I wonder if it's just the Baader–Meinhof effect or if the post was caused by the same youtube algorithm.

i would use the term frequency illusion, as baader-meinhof refers to a specific instance of someone who coined the term, and are members of a former west german left extremist terrorist group which actually killed people. pretty weird that it continues to be in use, it'd be as if we discovered this effect today and called it the taliban effect or the stalin gulag effect.
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