Article In:
The Mental Lexicon: Online-First ArticlesSymbols to shapes processing
The Bouba/Kiki (BK) effect is observed when a linguistic sound is associated with a shape. People usually
associate the nonword bouba with a round shape, and kiki with a sharp shape (Ramachandran & Hubbard, 2001). In 2011, Nielsen and Rendall found that certain
English letters (/k/, /p/, and /t/) and (/b/, /l/, /m/, and /n/) were associated with sharp and round shapes respectively. The BK
effect was investigated in depth for the first time in Arabic in 2022 (Nassereddine) using Arabic Analogs to the English letters.
Arabic participants’ performance was not consistent with previous research (2011). The goal of the present study was to determine
the roundest and sharpest Arabic letters by presenting all letters both visually and to Arabic speakers and have them say whether
a letter shape or sound best maps on to the standard bouba and kiki shapes. The results revealed
that Arabic does have both round and sharp letters, and that there is a strong influence of phonological features on this BK
effect.
Keywords: Bouba/Kiki effect, Arabic, round and sharp letters
Article outline
- Method
- Participants
- Stimuli
- Letter stimuli
- Image stimuli
- Procedure
- Results
- Discussion
- Note
-
References
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