Bouba/kiki effect

I don't know how a blob can be spiky.

Is this a sort of Kiki Booba thing? But it's a spiky blob.

There we go.

Look, at least he got the Gary handshake.

Here, our visual perception and auditory perception are becoming intertwined.

The Buba-Kiki effect is another instance of this.

If I present these two images to you, which one would you call Buba and which one would you call Kiki?

Oh, Buba's definitely the squishy looking one and Kiki's the hard one.

Sharp.

Buba-Kiki.

Both American college undergraduates and Tamil speakers in India are more likely to call the left shape Kiki and the right shape Bubba.

What? And which one would you call Kiki? Both American college undergraduates and Tamil speakers in India are more likely to call the left shape Kiki and the right shape Bubba.

Wait, what?

Bouba is round and kiki is sharp.

And, like, if you take someone who doesn't know bouba versus kiki, like, the-

They naturally go that way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[beatboxing] [laughs] Dude, for the past five minutes we've just been making noise.

Bouba and kiki.

Yeah, I feel like I'm very bouba.

And the other is a round, blobby splat shape.

Which one is bouba and which one is kiki, do you think, Anker?

Bouba, I'll go with the splatty one.

Mm-hmm Congratulations

So I'm as intelligent as a dog

Today's let's read some mail is from kiwiwalter119 on Instagram.

She told us about this very interesting effect called the bouba-kiki effect.

Oh.

Do you know about this?

Hmm.

So a few brave scientists decided to test this.

This study is titled Matching Sounds to Shapes: Evidence of the Bouba-Kiki Effect in Naïve Baby Chicks.

They took one-day and three-day-old chicks, baby chicks.