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Bouba/kiki effect

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Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#131

Post by Biganon »

bowsamic wrote: post #103
OmarShehata wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this implies that humans have an intuitive sense of the shape of the waveform, which I think would be surprising!! And also empirically testable (not saying you're wrong, but it's not necessarily obvious to me as true. The sound is a vibration/signal, how our brains interpret it may have no correlation to its "shape". Do we have an intuition for "spiky" electromagnetic signals? maybe we do, that's why looking at natu…

Of course we do, humans can sense timbre and transients and all that

Being able to sense timbre has nothing to do with being able to tell the shape of the waveform of a sound.

You're able to recognize red, you're unable to tell me it's wavelength (intuitively)

Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#132

Post by Biganon »

Harmohit wrote: post #81

I used to experience this had a kid! Not only did words and some names have shapes, but they were quite often coloured shapes. I have quite strong memories of some of the associations I made between names and shapes. However, I have completely lost the 'ability' as an adult. I do not feel it at all.

Synesthesia!

I had the biggest conundrum as a child. I remembered my grandmother had two dolls on her shelf, one pink and one blue. One tall and thin, one short and fat.

I also remembered that the colors "matched" the body types.

But I can't for the life of me remember if it was "pink = tall and slim" and "blue = short and fat" or the other way round. Both make sense! It's like a synesthesia blue/gold dress, all happening inside my head!

Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#133

Post by cdrini »

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'm not sure I think this illustrates different types of intelligences.

For me, looking at the image, I have to suspend disbelief about a lot of things. This is a very simplified picture of a bus, lots of elements are missing/unrealistic, so I have to try to determine what missing things are part of the puzzle and which things are just coincidence. I think children would not be able to suspend their disbelief as quickly, and will instead immediately map the image to the real world object. They don't notice that the back bumper and the front bumper are identical (which they shouldn't be) or that the back window and the front window are identical (which they shouldn't be). So looking at this image, I decided "ok so this isn't meant to be a real bus, it's some sort of puzzle, so let me look for clues about it's direction of motion."

That first part, "this isn't meant to be a real bus", is the piece that causes the difference, I believe. It's that thinking that makes it difficult to think "well what's on the other side of the bus?", because who knows, this bus doesn't have real world bumpers who knows if it has real world doors. As an adult, we can abstract and reason about a theoretical bus that might not have doors, whereas I think a child would connect that to the concrete bus and have difficulty abstracting.

Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#134

Post by bowsamic »

Biganon wrote: post #131
bowsamic wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course we do, humans can sense timbre and transients and all that

Being able to sense timbre has nothing to do with being able to tell the shape of the waveform of a sound. You're able to recognize red, you're unable to tell me it's wavelength (intuitively)

Recognising red _is_ recognising its wavelength. True, we don't know what frequency we hear/wavelength we see is associate with which specific number, but that's irrelevant.

Humans are born with the capability of doing a mechanical Fourier decomposition in our ears. Knowing the amplitude at each frequency, as all humans that can hear do, gives us information about the waveform.

Sensing timbre therefore is information about the waveform. We do not have complete information (e.g. we do not sense all the phase information) but we have approximate information about the time-domain waveform.

Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#135

Post by mkl »

zoky wrote: post #52
incognito124 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it's entirely what we're used to. Mainly when I hear one the other way around it's a non-native speaker, but sometimes the inverted order is used for effect, e.g. A Song of Ice and Fire sounds off-kilter, like its world and characters.

Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#136

Post by mkl »

moritzwarhier wrote: post #4

The waveforms for "Bouba" are less "spiky" I'd guess: fewer overtones, less noisy, more tonal, so more round and quasi periodical

I think it's the shapes made by your mouth and tongue to make the sounds. Rounded to make b and ou and a, and sharp corners and tongue-palate gap to make k and i. The Wikipedia article mentions a little about this.

Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#137

Post by ffsm8 »

Biganon wrote: post #130
ffsm8 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there is a difference in the picture. You'd also determine that it's going left when looking at the windshields, as only the left side is completely straight. Honestly, this image is a terrible example to illustrate their point. I think it's more likely that children are more likely to actually use public transit, which is why they'd be able to detect the missing door quickly.

The right windshield is straight as well, you see part of a building behind it

I meant the small indention below the windshield that's only on the right side. The black line from the window ends slightly further out then the chassis of the bus

Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#138

Post by huhtenberg »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #126
huhtenberg wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"three or two" means "likely three, maybe two" "two or three" means "likely two, maybe three" Here, the ordering is significant and has nothing to do with a habit.

That's not a common connotation; I've never once seen anyone use those phrases to mean that. "two or three" does not typically have any connotation of either being more likely.

Might be something specific to where you are?

What I described is how this construct is used in every place I lived.

Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#139

Post by npteljes »

spencerchubb wrote: post #40
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…

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!

I'd say that adults worry, and that's because they are explicitly taught as children to label such behavior nonsense and discard it.

Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#140

Post by asddubs »

portaouflop wrote: post #107
cnasc wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this bus is clearly intended to be a school bus but it’s missing too much detail. If the absence of the door is a valid clue, then so is the absence of the big red stop sign that is on the non-door-side.

Lay off the copium - busses don’t have red stop signs everywhere (for example they don’t have them here) But they always have doors…

they also always have mirrors, which is the first thing an adult would probably look for (since it applies more universally to vehicles)
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