by paulgerhardt
4 subcomments
- 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 shoes walking down stairs to illustrate the "Hundred Languages of Children" concept. It showed how kids translate auditory experiences into visual ones - high heels would been drawn with spikey patterns and construction boots would be big wavey ones. This is reminiscent of the Bouba-Kiki effect. But other smaller nuances such as duration translating to span and loudness to magnitude.
I took away a fascinating insight from childhood cognition: children effortlessly bridge sensory modalities, an ability that often diminishes in adults to the point that asking an adult to “draw this sound” or “build something that feels like this smell” is met with a blank look but which a child is often completely game to try. Tasking an adult with a cross-modal assignment literally does not compute.
This cross-modal perception revealed that children possess a remarkable synesthetic intuition, using diverse forms of expression to understand and interpret the world—an ability I had completely forgotten as an adult, which hindered my communication with young children in early education environments.
It highlighted the importance of nurturing cross modal communication styles and once one notices it (like in say Mr. Rogers opening ritual to use multiple queues to engage children’s parasympathetic nervous system) one unlocks a whole new vocabulary with not just children but adults. It’s been a powerful tool in my creative toolbox since.
- 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?
by ComplexSystems
3 subcomments
- 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't take much intuition to guess that the sharper shape will produce a sound closer to "ki," with sharp transients and lots of high frequencies - like a piece of glass or metal falling - and the rounded one perhaps closer to "bou," with softer transients and perhaps a time-varying resonant frequency as the shape is malleable (think of the sound of a drop of water landing).
- 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.
- A friend of mine made a fun (upcoming) cooperative party game based on this:
- BGG: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/408945/boubakiki
- Kickstarter (Funded): https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/grandgamersguild/bouba-...
The cards in the game have nonsense words and illustrations. Players work through various scenarios where they try to agree about which nonsense words should go with which illustrations.
by moritzwarhier
5 subcomments
- The waveforms for "Bouba" are less "spiky" I'd guess:
fewer overtones, less noisy, more tonal, so more round and quasi periodical
- Previous discussion from 2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27885703
by userbinator
2 subcomments
- "Bouba" sounds like a slang term for a certain part of the human anatomy which is also rounded and curvy.
- As an art teacher I use this effect to demonstrate how meaning in an image can be inate, as opposed to socially constructed. To demonstrate social construction I use an image of an arrow. To an Australian aborigini an arrow 'points' in the 'wrong' direction as it's directionality is derived from its semblance to a birds footprint.
- One of the best TED talks ever given, by VS Ramachandran - a video describing some of the fundamental mechanisms of the brain. This video was the first time I heard Bouba and Kiki, but there's so much more going on in this talk. It's wonderful.
- Someone made a script (for English) based on this concept: https://pcho.net/takeluma/
by AdmiralAsshat
1 subcomments
- Interesting. I was given a similar "test" in high school, although the names given were Kepick and Oona. But the same preference was there: "kepick" with its "sharp" sounds favored the angled drawing, "Oona" the more undulating. There were some other questions as well, such as a hypothetical about which shape was male and which female (strong preference in the class towards "Oona" being female).
I don't think I'm alone in this: I googled Kepick and Oona and found a reference from a 2012 blogpost: https://nwccapstone.blogspot.com/2012/02/meet-oona-and-kepic...
So I have to ponder how bouba/kiki diverged into kepick/oona. Kinda wonder if some random schoolteacher remembered the study but didn't remember the exact names, substituted something similar, and then built it into a curriculum that got picked up by the education system.
- When I hear or say K, T, or Ch, I hear a higher pitch frequency being used than B, M, L (which sounds like lower frequencies).
Humans have a psychoacoustic effect that makes higher pitch sounds perceived as being louder.
When somethting has a louder intial sound, but the transient sound is about the same, it makes it feel more snappy (like a snare, versus a kick). This is reminiscent of a jagged edge.
- I wonder if this effect can be explained by the we form the "bouba"/"kiki" sounds when we speak them. "Kiki" has a sharper enunciation when using your tongue and mouth to form it, while "bouba" feels more like an open round one.
- These have entered our common household vocabulary after I called one of our houseplants "a little too kiki for my liking" and was forced to explain. Humans love categories, it's great to have names for splits like this :)
by dclowd9901
2 subcomments
- I have likened this effect to “what sounds right.”
I am curious about something with German, and would love feedback from native German speakers: “gendering” on German words seems to be largely arbitrary (as opposed to the romantic languages where gendering seems to align with how the culture associates the word to a gender). My suspicion, that has “felt” correct in most cases, is that gendering in German words is largely an artifact of which article sounds the most correct with the word. Sort of how we might use “a/an” with words that have consonant or vowel starting sounds in English.
Is there any truth to this supposition?
- I always thought Bouba/Kiki would make cool "matching" tattoos.
Strangely, everyone I've asked says they would want to be Bouba. No one wants to be Kiki.
by kayo_20211030
1 subcomments
- Why has nobody mentioned Chomsky in this thread? The correspondence in the results between American English and Tamil just seems like something that should shout Chomsky. I know little about it, but some form of universality in language, and how humans see the shape of it, seems apt as a starting point.
- 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.
- Welp. Got it wrong. I thought of a Hawaiian flower when I heard Kiki and chose the flower looking one. I can also associate bouba to mean bulbous and choose the rounder one. My brain pattern matches like crazy.
- Kuchi is stick in Tamil
Banthu is ball in Tamil
Kuchi <> Kiki
Banthu <> Bouba
- HN is kiki
- So the article mentions the congenitally blind, but not congenitally deaf.
It would be pretty mind-blowing if it still worked.
- Sounds and visuals I believe both map to a more fundamental language of the human brain.
- It's actually fucking insane that I'm seeing this pop up on HN right now, I literally just watched a VSauce video (posted like a year ago) explaining this bouba/kiki effect!
- they match the waveform, and also the letter shape.
by vinnyvichy
1 subcomments
- Niki Bourbaki is the name of a very well balanced multiperson.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki
- Interesting that the words acute and obtuse seem to follow the same pattern. Etymology says they come from ancient words for needle and club. Which also follow the same pattern.
- The most we can say is that some languages (notably NOT mandarin Chinese with ~1 billion native speakers, so the idea that it's ingrained in all humans is laughable at best) have a preference for giving the long bou and boo sound to rounder objects and the shorter ki and ka sounds to sharper objects, and that language affects our naming preference.
by richrichie
0 subcomment
- But kiki is not a nonsense word in French.
by atleastoptimal
1 subcomments
- Seems very self-evident/obvious. In real life, soft, round things make soft, muted sounds. Sharp things make higher pitched, shorter sounds. The sounds of bouba and kiki reflects this.
- Now I finally know where ca. 2008 communist web series sock puppets Bubu and Kiki got their names from. What a flashback: http://www.monochrom.at/kiki-and-bubu/