bouba/kiki effect

English

This picture is used as a test to demonstrate that people may not attach sounds to shapes arbitrarily: American college undergraduates and Tamil speakers in India both called the shape on the left "kiki" and the one on the right "bouba".

Alternative forms

• bouba–kiki effect
• kiki/bouba effect, kiki–bouba effect

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˌbubə ˈkiki ɪˌfɛkt/
• (General American, weak vowel merger) IPA^(key): /ˌbubə ˈkiki əˌfɛkt/

Etymology

Bouba and kiki were the pseudowords used in a 2001 experiment on this topic, carried out by Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and Edward Hubbard. See picture.

Noun

the bouba/kiki effect

1. A non-arbitrary mapping between speech sounds and the visual shape of objects.