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Bouba/kiki effect

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Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#91

Post by JyB »

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?

That seem completely unrelated/off-topic. Those are patterns that people hear and repeat. The article’s effect describes something that is apparently not just shared information, that is deeper.

Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#92

Post by JyB »

ComplexSystems wrote: post #27

I have always thought this association is partly from some intuition we have about the mechanical and acoustic properties of hypothetical things that would have this shape. The shape with sharp, jagged edges would occur in real life if it were made of some hard material, perhaps, like glass, metal, etc. The shape with the soft, curvy lines would occur if it were made of something softer and possibly elastic. It doesn…

Can’t the bouba/kiki effect be replicated in tribes that do not interact with glass/metals? Or barely

Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#93

Post by troad »

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…

The Occam's razor explanation for the worldwide distribution of mama / dada is very, very straightforward: (a) they are the easiest syllables, and therefore some of the first and most common syllables children babble, (b) parents are extremely willing to read meaning into the sounds their children make (what parent doesn't think their kid is a little genius?), and (c) parents are eeeever so slightly self-interested in what that meaning should be.

Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#94

Post by Daub »

otho wrote: post #33

Someone made a script (for English) based on this concept: https://pcho.net/takeluma/

How amusing. The images he uses for bouba/kiki are non-standard. In fact, they were sourced from an educational rescource I made over ten years ago. So nice to see them again, though in retrospect it would have been better had I used the standard set.

Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#95

Post by [deleted] »

madebythejus wrote: post #47
ComplexSystems wrote: post #27

I have always thought this association is partly from some intuition we have about the mechanical and acoustic properties of hypothetical things that would have this shape. The shape with sharp, jagged edges would occur in real life if it were made of some hard material, perhaps, like glass, metal, etc. The shape with the soft, curvy lines would occur if it were made of something softer and possibly elastic. It doesn…

The effect is somehow also visible in the shapes of the letters, with ‘B’, ‘O’ ‘U’ being rounded and soft. The letters ‘K’ and ‘I’ are made of sharper shapes featuring triangles and lines. I wonder if letter designs were influenced by the sounds made by objects.

[deleted]

Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#96

Post by z3dd »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #80
JoshTriplett wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even among words that do theoretically have an ordering preference, some people have different habits. I knew someone who habitually said "three or two", rather than "two or three". Leaving aside the effect of prosody mentioned in another comment, I think the rest of it is habit, together with the brain's tendency to group things. If you're used to hearing "plus or minus", your brain may be grouping it together into…

> For instance, a±b∓c means "a+b-c or a-b+c". I feel like this would be less confusing if rendered as "±(a+b-c)". It's the same amount of cognitive effort for figuring out the second term/factor, but you get the first one for free.

that makes a and -a

Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#97

Post by schoen »

madebythejus wrote: post #47
ComplexSystems wrote: post #27

I have always thought this association is partly from some intuition we have about the mechanical and acoustic properties of hypothetical things that would have this shape. The shape with sharp, jagged edges would occur in real life if it were made of some hard material, perhaps, like glass, metal, etc. The shape with the soft, curvy lines would occur if it were made of something softer and possibly elastic. It doesn…

The effect is somehow also visible in the shapes of the letters, with ‘B’, ‘O’ ‘U’ being rounded and soft. The letters ‘K’ and ‘I’ are made of sharper shapes featuring triangles and lines. I wonder if letter designs were influenced by the sounds made by objects.

These are great guesses, but it doesn't look like they match with what's known about the earlier forms of these letters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Latin_script#Ul...

Particularly, the degree of sharpness or roundness of a particular letter may have changed a lot over time. I guess it's still possible that there's been some kind of psychological effect at certain times, but it doesn't look like it was a strong and consistent factor in the history of the alphabet.

Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#98

Post by billyjmc »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #80
JoshTriplett wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even among words that do theoretically have an ordering preference, some people have different habits. I knew someone who habitually said "three or two", rather than "two or three". Leaving aside the effect of prosody mentioned in another comment, I think the rest of it is habit, together with the brain's tendency to group things. If you're used to hearing "plus or minus", your brain may be grouping it together into…

> For instance, a±b∓c means "a+b-c or a-b+c". I feel like this would be less confusing if rendered as "±(a+b-c)". It's the same amount of cognitive effort for figuring out the second term/factor, but you get the first one for free.

What you’ve suggested is not equivalent. The a is always taken without negation, and that’s not the case in your rendering.

Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#99

Post by smokel »

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 tried to find some source for this, but could not trace it back further than a YouTube video from 2016 [1], which is very light on details, to say the least.

This kind of "research" does not really warrant the amount of inspirational blog posts that has resulted from it. In fact, as an adult I tend to reject 80% of these stories as nonsense.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVKR4A8a4lw

Re: Bouba/kiki effect

#100

Post by underyx »

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 think in the US kids use buses (school buses) at a higher rate than adults. The bus in the image is also colored yellow, just like school buses. Perhaps it has more to do with kids just having more recent experiences solving the same problem in real life?
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