You may have come across the bouba/kiki question before. This is the fact that, the world over, people from all sorts of linguistic backgrounds feel that ‘bouba’ sounds “round” and ‘kiki’ sounds “spiky” and, more broadly, that certain sounds should ‘look’ a certain way.
That might sound funny, but it offers some insights into the origin of language, and how it may have developed.
A researcher in comparative psychology, Maria Loconsole, explored whether other species make similar associations. She tested newly hatched chicks, whose birdbrains had not yet been influenced by their experience of the world. She placed chicks in front of images of round, blobby shapes and of sharp, spiky shapes, and then played them recordings of human voices saying ‘bouba’ and ‘kiki’. The results were amazing: 80% of the chicks approached the round shape when they heard ‘bouba’, and the same percentage approached the spiky shape when they heard ‘kiki’.
What does it mean? Given that the ancestors of humans and the ancestors of birds parted evolutionary ways about 300 million years ago, it’s suggestive of a perceptual bias that dates very far back in our evolutionary history. One theory suggests that this instinctive bias might relate to the physical properties of moving objects and may have provided some evolutionary advantage in terms of helping animals to avoid predators in their environment.
In humans, who have developed language, the bouba/kiki effect has had many impacts on how we talk and perceive the world around us. It might sound funny, but this is a very important area of research.
Photo Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/white-chick-on-persons-hand-0R2lOqibKgA
