In our study, we showed that baby domestic chickens (Gallus gallus) respond to sound-symbolic associations similar to humans, preferentially matching the sounds ‘Bouba’ and ‘Kiki’ to a round and a spiky shape, respectively.
This could be convergent development between mammals and aves, but honestly I think it’s inherited. (I wonder if lizards show evidence of the effect? Some can be quite smart, like green iguanas.)
If inherited then we’ve been subjected to the bouba-kiki effect for more than 300M years — kind of funny how something so old would have an impact on Language later on, for some weird clade of hairless apes.
Link to the paper, and excerpt from the conclusion:
This could be convergent development between mammals and aves, but honestly I think it’s inherited. (I wonder if lizards show evidence of the effect? Some can be quite smart, like green iguanas.)
If inherited then we’ve been subjected to the bouba-kiki effect for more than 300M years — kind of funny how something so old would have an impact on Language later on, for some weird clade of hairless apes.
Thanks for the direct link.