ABSTRACT
The present study aimed to investigate whether or not the so-called "bouba-kiki" effect is mediated by speech-specific representations. Sine-wave versions of naturally produced pseudowords were used as auditory stimuli in an implicit association task (IAT) and an explicit cross-modal matching (CMM) task to examine cross-modal shape-sound correspondences. A group of participants trained to hear the sine-wave stimuli as speech was compared to a group that heard them as non-speech sounds. Sound-shape correspondence effects were observed in both groups and tasks, indicating that speech-specific processing is not fundamental to the "bouba-kiki" phenomenon. Effects were similar across groups in the IAT, while in the CMM task the speech-mode group showed a stronger effect compared with the non-speech group. This indicates that, while both tasks reflect auditory-visual associations, only the CMM task is additionally sensitive to associations involving speech-specific representations.
Subject(s)
Speech Perception , Speech , Hearing , Humans , SoundABSTRACT
Sound-symbolic patterns which relate to the perception of size were found to motivate the behavior of English and Japanese speakers in the naming of pre- and post-evolution Pokémon. The current study builds from this finding and investigates which sound-symbolic association speakers of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) employ to name Pokémon characters. Results from 3 experiments show that vowel quality, phonological length and voiced obstruents, usually used to signal differences in size, are used to signal differences in evolution; however, the effects of voiced obstruents are not identical to what was previously observed in the behavior of Japanese speakers. We argue that although there is a universal sound symbolism associated with these sounds and the perception of largeness, its manifestation differs cross-linguistically. To the best of our knowledge, this is one the first experimental research to investigate sound symbolism and the perception of size in BP.