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Bouba/Kiki Effect

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Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect

#31

Post by saberdancer »

alok99 wrote: post #27
haecceity wrote: post #23

I don't get it? What's the significance of this? I thought the left one is bam/pow and the right one is a blob?

From the article: Without being told which shape was which, > 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 in a consistent way So apart from visually impaired (from birth) people, we may have a pattern in mapping shapes to phonemes.

My guess is that the shape of our mouth/tongue makes us choose "bouba" for the rounded shape.

Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect

#32

Post by anigbrowl »

renewiltord wrote: post #25
anigbrowl wrote: post #21

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. Well, no shit - that's why we refer to onomatopoeia, a word which probably has far wider currency than others of similar provenance like poiesis. I'll add a conjecture that similar disparities exist in vowels, with e and i being conside…

> Well, no shit,... It is fascinating how many science grants we could save on if we just asked HN commenters to describe the world. To think that we might have reached such knowledge about human beings by just asking HN to tell us about the world. Eat your heart out, Karl Popper. It appears that Keats wins the day.

Consulting people who are intuitively skilled in some area can often be a good way to get a head start on understanding a problem. Given the seeming universality of imitation in humans, the assumption of complete arbitrariness actually seems like the bolder claim.

Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect

#33

Post by robbie-c »

As someone who has trouble remembering which way round Type 1 and Type 2 decisions are defined, I have started calling them Bouba and Kiki decisions.

It doesn't help whatsoever but it does wind up my cofounder ;)

Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect

#34

Post by nirav72 »

jraph wrote: post #22
codezero wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is intriguing, can you describe in more detail how you map a series of numbers to a shape/sound? like is 1234 a slope / ?

It sounds like synesthesia. Some people see the year as ring-shaped in their head. The "visualization" is consistent during the lifetime and can help memorizing dates. I don't have this, though I do have a consistent "visualization" of numbers under one hundred (and, yes, months, and days of months, and weeks) since very young. Probably helps a bit to memorize some stuff, though I can't compare with the same me depri…

does it always have to be a ring? I've always imagined a year vertically/top down. Each month a slice. Also alphabet letters in color. Each letter having a distinct color.

Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect

#35

Post by andrewflnr »

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.

Leaves and flowers are still mostly curvy. I can't think of anything soft that has straight lines meeting at sharp angles. Rigidity is physically necessary for maintaining that shape long term.

On the other side, you rarely see rocks with extended round parts meeting at sharp, concave angles. A lot if not most things that look like that are soft.

It's not a perfect correlation, but it does seem like a real one to me.

Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect

#36

Post by twelvechairs »

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.

'Symbolism' is a terrible word to describe something like this. Symbols are convention and can change. This is the opposite - an innate cross-sensory connection that will not change.

Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect

#37

Post by a_t48 »

nirav72 wrote: post #34
jraph wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like synesthesia. Some people see the year as ring-shaped in their head. The "visualization" is consistent during the lifetime and can help memorizing dates. I don't have this, though I do have a consistent "visualization" of numbers under one hundred (and, yes, months, and days of months, and weeks) since very young. Probably helps a bit to memorize some stuff, though I can't compare with the same me depri…

does it always have to be a ring? I've always imagined a year vertically/top down. Each month a slice. Also alphabet letters in color. Each letter having a distinct color.

Do you have synesthesia? The alphabet color thing is a common marker of it

Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect

#39

Post by alserio »

beebmam wrote: post #5

I first learned about this effect from Hempuli, the developer of the game "Baba Is You". It turns out that "Baba" and "Keke", two named objects that the player can control, were named after this effect! Hempuli talked about this during one of their twitch streams many months back. (I can't say enough wonderful things about this game)

That's exactly what I was wondering. Thank you. And I agree with you, Baba is you is awesome! I really like Hempuli touch also in Noita.

Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect

#40

Post by Aeolun »

nirav72 wrote: post #34
jraph wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like synesthesia. Some people see the year as ring-shaped in their head. The "visualization" is consistent during the lifetime and can help memorizing dates. I don't have this, though I do have a consistent "visualization" of numbers under one hundred (and, yes, months, and days of months, and weeks) since very young. Probably helps a bit to memorize some stuff, though I can't compare with the same me depri…

does it always have to be a ring? I've always imagined a year vertically/top down. Each month a slice. Also alphabet letters in color. Each letter having a distinct color.

I don’t have enough colors in my head to fill a whole alphabet.
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