Which of These Figures is "Kiki?" And Which is "Bouba?"

"95% to 98% of people choose kiki for the angular shape and bouba for the rounded one... Even 2.5 year-old children (too young to read) show this effect."

"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."

Link.

You can see the same in how the words are written: kiki (angular), and bouba (rounded).

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I beg to differ, Kiki is obviously the chubby one. 95% of you are wrong.

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This is news to these people?
think about Bert and Ernie or Ren and Stimpy. They had those names for a reason (reversed for comic effect of course).

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I wonder how much the effect would be reversed if the names were presented not in the same sequence as the expected outcome? In the example above you read two names, look at two shapes and there's probably a strong bias towards assigning the first name to the first object.

I'm sure this was controlled for in the experiment, but those data aren't offered.

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This effect has its own Wikipedia entry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect

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I saw the shapes as being male (angular) and female (rounded) thus taking the more female sounding name (kiki) for the rounder figure and the more male sounding name (bouba) for the more angular figure.

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I asked my kids wich one was bubba and kitty (in that order) presenting the picture (spiky on the left, and round on the right) and got the opposite 2% result.
What would be the result in an arabic country where they're reading from right to left?

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It was pretty obvious from the start. Kiki is high-spirited and energetic while Bouba is a funny shape that is always a pleasure to be around.

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