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Bouba/kiki effect

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Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#51

Post by avg_dev »

paulgerhardt wrote: post #17

Fifteen years ago I went to a museum exhibit on Reggio Emilia teaching methods that I still think about once a week or so. (Reggio Emilia is similar to Montessori in that it is child-led exploration but different in that encourages multiple cross-modal forms of expression to aid comprehension.) The Reggio Emilia exhibit featured children performing a cross-modal exercise of drawing the sounds of various types of shoe…

you know, i think this skill can be learned. i used to definitely have very little ability to "bridge sensory modalities", but i've been studying music and performance as a hobby somewhat seriously for about 6 years now. and i now feel like i have much more of that ability than i did before. i probably had it as a kid, just as you were saying, but i am definitely well into adulthood now :)

(there is a radio program i listen to where the guy talks about the music he plays and the context and he explains many things in this sort of "bridging sensory modalities" sort of way. and i used to always think, "that is just some straight up nonsense that he is saying." but now, i often see what he is saying very literally...)

Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#52

Post by zoky »

incognito124 wrote: post #12
jesprenj wrote: post #5

What about the effect where for some pairs of words that don't theoretically have ordering preference (kiki/bouba vs bouba/kiki), (plus/minus vs minus/plus), (on/off vs off/on), (positive/negative vs negative/positive) have some psychological order that most people use and if the other ordering is used, it sound weird? Does this effect have a name?

Yes. As per etymologynerd, English speakers tend to like trochaic stress rhythm in sentences, like "salt and pepper" or "lee and sophie" where a different ordering sounds weird.

Maybe, but there are plenty of counter examples:

“Chicken and egg”

“Cookies and cream”

“Heaven and Earth”

“Chapter and verse”

Seems like some phrases just are a certain way, and inverting them sounds wrong just because that’s what we’re used to hearing.

Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#53

Post by mopierotti »

sethammons wrote: post #42
spencerchubb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the ability diminishes in adults, or if adults are more inhibited and worried about looking foolish. Try the same experiment with adults after drinking alcohol!

If you take this picture and ask adults and kids which way the bus is traveling, kids get it right more often than adults https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/which-way-bus-going-why-adult... Spoilers: adults prune information for more efficient processing and in doing so lose information

I don't think this is a good example. The bus is clearly a simplified representation. If the answer/explanation given was actually correct then you'd also expect the bus to have other details like side view mirrors.

Edit: I hate to dwell on this too much, but even if a door and mirrors were visible, the bus could be in reverse. This seems to be more of a case of accidentally picking the intended answer due to a lack of knowledge. (Of levels of abstraction in representation and of vehicle design.) That said, I don't necessarily disagree with the underlying point being made.

Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#54

Post by alwa »

bee_rider wrote: post #35
mtndew4brkfst wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In (US?) English if you were to describe some thing and you had many adjectives for its size, color, origin, age, a visual pattern like "polka dot" or striped, and so on - many native speakers (at least in my region) would intuitively assemble that clause in the same order as each other without really being able to clearly articulate why. There are some supposed grammar rules that inform it but in my circles people j…

Big shiny square metal block doesn’t look so bad to me, but big shiny heavy square metal block does. Perhaps big it is the switch back and forth… big and heavy are fuzzily size-like characteristics while shiny is not… Is a big shiny square metal block the same thing as a big square shiny metal block? I’m not sure. I think the former is a big square metal block which happens to also be shiny, while the latter is a big…

Linguists apparently have characterized this phenomenon and call it the “Royal Order of Adjectives” [0]:

1. Quantity or number (e.g., “two”)

2. Quality or opinion (e.g., “lovely”)

3. Size (e.g., “big”)

4. Age (e.g., “old”)

5. Shape (e.g., “round”)

6. Color (e.g., “red”)

7. Origin (e.g., “French”)

8. Material (e.g., “wooden”)

9. Purpose (e.g., “sleeping” in “sleeping bag”)

[0] https://www.grammarly.com/blog/adjective-order/

Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#55

Post by acyou »

Mama/dada effect: Children everywhere in the world say mamamama as their first syllable, which is why mama means mother both in Chinese and in anglo-franco-hispanic-germanic-latin languages, and everywhere else. They then say dada, baba, papa, which is why baba means dad in both China and in latin languages.

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. - Nonsense, mama is an easier syllable for mouths to make, that's the sound that cats make as well as cows.

Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#56

Post by acyou »

acyou wrote: post #55

Mama/dada effect: Children everywhere in the world say mamamama as their first syllable, which is why mama means mother both in Chinese and in anglo-franco-hispanic-germanic-latin languages, and everywhere else. They then say dada, baba, papa, which is why baba means dad in both China and in latin languages. Ramachandran and Hubbard suggest that the kiki/bouba effect has implications for the evolution of language, be…

Maybe that's why we call them "ma- mmals" ?

Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#57

Post by stfp »

userbinator wrote: post #22

"Bouba" sounds like a slang term for a certain part of the human anatomy which is also rounded and curvy.

In French "kiki" is also slang, more like child speak really, for a more pointy part

Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#58

Post by nemomarx »

acyou wrote: post #56
acyou wrote: post #55

Mama/dada effect: Children everywhere in the world say mamamama as their first syllable, which is why mama means mother both in Chinese and in anglo-franco-hispanic-germanic-latin languages, and everywhere else. They then say dada, baba, papa, which is why baba means dad in both China and in latin languages. Ramachandran and Hubbard suggest that the kiki/bouba effect has implications for the evolution of language, be…

Maybe that's why we call them "ma- mmals" ?

Think mammaries, which comes from an old word for milk, so probably from mother, yeah.

Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#59

Post by gjm11 »

acyou wrote: post #56
acyou wrote: post #55

Mama/dada effect: Children everywhere in the world say mamamama as their first syllable, which is why mama means mother both in Chinese and in anglo-franco-hispanic-germanic-latin languages, and everywhere else. They then say dada, baba, papa, which is why baba means dad in both China and in latin languages. Ramachandran and Hubbard suggest that the kiki/bouba effect has implications for the evolution of language, be…

Maybe that's why we call them "ma- mmals" ?

You say that like it's a joke, but they're called mammals because they have mammae -- breasts, udders -- and although I don't know completely for certain I'd be flabbergasted if Latin mamma weren't very directly related to mama etc. (Wiktionary says it's from Greek "mamme" which it alleges is a back-formation from babies' "mama", and cites a learned-sounding reference, but I don't know whether anyone actually has more than conjecture here.)
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