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Article Abstract
Languages have evolved in part due to cross-modal associations between shape and sound. A famous example is the Bouba-Kiki effect, wherein humans associate words like bouba/kiki to round/angular shapes. How does the Bouba-Kiki effect work for natural words and shapes that contain a mixture of features? If the effect is holistic, the effect for a composite stimulus would not be explainable using the parts. If the effect is compositional, it will be. Here we provide evidence for the latter possibility. In Experiments 1 and 2, we standardized bouba-like and kiki-like shapes and words for use in subsequent experiments. In Experiments 3-5, we created composite shapes/words by combining bouba-like & kiki-like parts. In all experiments, the Bouba-Kiki effect strength for composite shapes/words was predicted remarkably well as a linear sum of the contributions of the constituent parts. Our results greatly simplify our understanding of the Bouba-Kiki effect, leaving little room for holism.
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Shape and word parts combine linearly in the Bouba-Kiki effect.
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Prior investigations have demonstrated that people tend to link pseudowords such as to rounded shapes and to spiky shapes, but the cognitive processes underlying this matching bias have remained controversial. Here, we present three experiments underscoring the fundamental role of emotional mediation in this sound-shape mapping. Using stimuli from key previous studies, we found that -like pseudowords and spiky shapes, compared with -like pseudowords and rounded shapes, consistently elicit higher levels of affective arousal, which we assessed through both subjective ratings (Experiment 1, = 52) and acoustic models implemented on the basis of pseudoword material (Experiment 2, = 70).
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