Since long time,
there is always a question raised that, ‘What is the origin of the language?’.
This question has attracted a lot of attention in the field of psychology too.
Psychologists have always wondered about how the human creates a word. When we
give a name to something does that sound is all random or is there some logic
behind it ? Can humans visualize the sound? Does a human visualize the sound?
To find answers to
all these questions and to find whether the language is arbitrary (random) or non-arbitrary[3] there are some experiments done in
psychology. One of these experiments is Kiki/Bouba effect. This was first
performed by the German psychologist Wolfgang Köhler in 1929. The experiment
was simple. A group of people were asked to give a name either ‘Takete’ or ‘malumba’
to the shown shape. Some of the shown shapes were bubbly curvy round and some
of them were spiky and pointy with sharp edges. Though the names don’t mean
anything, 95% of the participants choose name ‘Malumba’ for the round objects
and ‘Takete’ for spiky objects.[2]
Later in 2001,the same experiment was done by VS Ramachandran and Edward Hubbard using the words ‘Kiki’ and ‘Bouba’. This time, the participants were American undergraduate students and Tamil speakers in India. Though the words and participants were changed, the result remain same. About 95% to 98% students selected ‘Kiki’ for spiky objects and ‘Bouba’ for round objects.[1]
Later in 2001,the same experiment was done by VS Ramachandran and Edward Hubbard using the words ‘Kiki’ and ‘Bouba’. This time, the participants were American undergraduate students and Tamil speakers in India. Though the words and participants were changed, the result remain same. About 95% to 98% students selected ‘Kiki’ for spiky objects and ‘Bouba’ for round objects.[1]
From both the
experiments, it is observed that people relate harder sounds or forceful sounds
with sharp spiky objects and relatively softer sounds with round, bubbly
objects. It also depends upon the shape of the mouth while making the sound. As
you can see, to pronounce ‘Bouba’ you make your mouth round like ‘O’. on the
other hand, to pronounce ‘Kiki’ , you require to make sharp moment of tongue.
The actual reason behind this is still not confirmed but many psychologists
believe that it is a case of synesthesia. Synesthesia means the mixture of any
two senses. Like, testing the colors or relating shapes with different touch
senses. In this case, relating shapes with the sound. The recent study shows
that this effect is even noticed in the children of age 2.5 years. The study also shows that there are more
chances of damage to the ‘angular gyrus’ part in the brain (part of the brain
related to the language) in those who fail to match the ‘Bouba’ with round and
‘Kiki’ with spiky objects.[1]
To study this
effect and to reconfirm the results, we did a survey on 102 people in the age
group of 18 to 25. We asked 4 different questions to these people and collected
the answers.
The 1st
question was,
In this
question, given shape was asked to relate with either one of the names. Out of
102 people, 71 people answered ‘Kiki’ and remaining 31 answered ‘Bouba’.
Here is the
summary,
Although the standard result is of 88%, we get 69.6 % people answering with ‘Kiki’.
The 2nd
question was,
In this question
also, the previous question is repeated with names ‘Malumba’ and ‘Takete’. This
time, the bubbly shape was asked to relate with either one of those names. Out
of 102, 84 people answered ‘Malumba’ and remaining 18 answered ‘Takete’.
The summary is,
This result almost
match with the standard one.
The 3rd
question was,
This question is
exact opposite of the first two. In this question, the given name was asked to
match with either one of the shapes. Out of 102, 66 people choose option 1 and
remaining 36 choose option 2.
This result also
shows some deviation from the standard result.
The 4th
question was,
This question is
different from the first 3 questions. It is designed to study whether it is
consonant in the word or the vowel which decides the relation with the shape.
In simple words, do we relate shape according to the movement or shape of the
mouth while pronouncing a word or
according the forcefulness in the voice.
In this example,
you can see that ‘Kouka’ has the letter ‘K’ which is a sharp sound, but it also
contains vowels ‘O’ and ‘U’ because of which we make mouth round shape while pronouncing.
Similarly,
‘Bee-Bee’ has soft sound in ‘B’ but because of ‘E’, the shape of mouth is flat.
The standard
result says, it mostly depends upon the consonants. Meaning, most of the people
will relate the given shape with ‘Bee-Bee’. But our survey shows a little
different result. The number of people selecting ‘Bee-Bee’ are greater than
those who selected ‘Kouka’, but the difference is very less. Out of 102 people,
57 people selected ‘Bee-Bee’ and remaining 45 people selected ‘Kouka’.
Here, you can see
55.9% people selected ‘Bee-Bee’ and 44.1% selected ‘Kouka’.
From this survey,
you can see that the results are little deviated from the standard results and
the deviation in the last one is considerable. Though the actual reason behind
this is unknown, this might be the effect of selected age group and an
individual’s personality.
As you can see,
Kiki-Bouba effect is one of the most interesting effects in psychology and very
deep study has been done in this field. Compared to that, this is just an
overview of the topic. I hope this will help you to better understanding of the
effect and increasing enthusiasm in psychology. Happy Learning!
References:
[3] Reilly J, Hung J, Westbury C ,
Non-Arbitrariness in Mapping Word Form to Meaning: Cross-Linguistic Formal
Markers of Word Concreteness, 2017
