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Phonological and orthographic influences in the bouba–kiki effect

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posted on 2023-06-09, 03:19 authored by Christine Cuskley, Julia SimnerJulia Simner, Simon Kirby
We examine a high-profile phenomenon known as the bouba–kiki effect, in which non-word names are assigned to abstract shapes in systematic ways (e.g. rounded shapes are preferentially labelled bouba over kiki). In a detailed evaluation of the literature, we show that most accounts of the effect point to predominantly or entirely iconic cross-sensory mappings between acoustic or articulatory properties of sound and shape as the mechanism underlying the effect. However, these accounts have tended to confound the acoustic or articulatory properties of non-words with another fundamental property: their written form. We compare traditional accounts of direct audio or articulatory-visual mapping with an account in which the effect is heavily influenced by matching between the shapes of graphemes and the abstract shape targets. The results of our two studies suggest that the dominant mechanism underlying the effect for literate subjects is matching based on aligning letter curvature and shape roundedness (i.e. non-words with curved letters are matched to round shapes). We show that letter curvature is strong enough to significantly influence word–shape associations even in auditory tasks, where written word forms are never presented to participants. However, we also find an additional phonological influence in that voiced sounds are preferentially linked with rounded shapes, although this arises only in a purely auditory word–shape association task. We conclude that many previous investigations of the bouba–kiki effect may not have given appropriate consideration or weight to the influence of orthography among literate subjects.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Accepted version

Journal

Psychological Research

ISSN

0340-0727

Publisher

Springer Verlag

Issue

1

Volume

81

Page range

119-130

Department affiliated with

  • Psychology Publications

Research groups affiliated with

  • Synaesthesia Research Group Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2016-10-13

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2016-10-20

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2016-10-13

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