The Cellar - Jan 4, 2009: Bouba & Kiki

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- - Jan 4, 2009: Bouba & Kiki (http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=21788)

Jan 4, 2009: Bouba & Kiki

These two white images have names, one is Bouba and the other is Kiki.
Your assignment, should you choose to accept, is to figure out is which is which.

http://cellar.org/2009/Booba-Kiki.jpg

Congratulations, you said Bouba is on the right and Kiki is on the left, right? er, correct?

Quote:

An example of this is the bouba/kiki effect. In an experiment first designed by Wolfgang Köhler, people are asked to choose which of two shapes is named bouba and which kiki. 95% to 98% of people choose kiki for the angular shape and bouba for the rounded one. Individuals on the island of Tenerife showed a similar preference between shapes called takete and maluma. Even 2.5 year-old children (too young to read) show this effect.

Although that may not be true on the board. :haha:

Quote:

Ramachandran and Hubbard suggest the kiki/bouba effect has implications for the evolution of language, because the naming of objects is not completely arbitrary. The rounded shape may intuitively be named bouba because the mouth makes a more rounded shape to produce that sound, while a more taut, angular mouth shape is needed to articulate kiki. The sound of K is also harder and more forceful than that of B. Such "synesthesia-like mappings" suggest that this effect might be the neurological basis for sound symbolism, in which sounds are non-arbitrarily mapped to objects and actions in the world.

So now you know why boobs are boobs.

link

Via

I would have named them Pointy and Bill.

no, no: Bang and Splat

Hmm. My guess was opposit of the research. I guess I tried to assign them male and female traits to the names and named the pointy one the assumed male name and the other to the other. I am in the 2% group.

yeah, we could have told you that, merc

it's "bouba" not "bubba"

whole thing makes perfect sense to me. "kiki" has sharp, staccato sounds which correspond to the sharp, spiky images

It proves that some of our alphabet symbols are synesthetically derived?

Interesting thought! Did we start with the capital

M

and find that the sound was more "rounded", when we created the lower-case

m

?

Quote:

Originally Posted by monster (Post 623373)

yeah, we could have told you that, merc

:lol:
1. does that make me a two-percenter?
2. am I on report again?

Nope - just an extremist :cool: