Bouba-kiki effect

Bouba/Kiki Effect

The bouba/kiki effect or kiki/bouba effect is a phenomenon of crossmodal correspondence between sounds and shapes. It is a tendency in associating the nonsense words "bouba" with a round shape and "kiki" with a spiky shape in systematic ways.

Explanations of the bouba/kiki effect are typically described through iconic cross-sensory mechanisms. These mechanisms imply that the effect arises from a process where the properties inherent in the sound form of nonsense words or their motor articulations are directly matched to the properties of the abstract shapes. The bouba/kiki effect is a form of sound symbolism and considered as a universal sound-shape correspondence.

History

The bouba/kiki effect was initially observed by Georgian psychologist Dimitri Uznadze in 1924 and was later referenced by German American psychologist Wolfgang Köhler in a 1929 experiment. Köhler demonstrated the effect with the words "baluba" and "takete", which were subsequently changed to "maluma" and "takete." Köhler's findings indicate a strong preference for associating "maluma" with a rounded shape, while "takete" with a jagged shape.

In 2001, Ramachandran and Hubbard brought widespread attention to the phenomenon through their experiment using the words "bouba" and "kiki." They suggested that the bouba/kiki effect and other similar phenomena could offer important insights into the origins of language.

Research

A research in 2021 experimenting the phenomenon in 25 languages, representing nine language families and 10 writing systems, shows that there are strong effect of the phenomenon across the languages.