The Bouba-Kiki effect reflects generic shape-sound associations
Humans robustly associate spiky shapes to words like “Kiki” and round shapes to words like “Bouba”. A popular explanation is that the mouth forms an angular shape while saying “Kiki” and a rounded shape while saying “Bouba”, leading to this association. Alternatively, there could be generic associations between the shapes of objects and the sounds they produce. These possibilities can be distinguished using unpronounceable sounds: the mouth-shape hypothesis predicts no effect, whereas the generic shape hypothesis predicts a systematic effect. Here, we show that the Bouba-Kiki effect is present for a variety of unpronounceable sounds ranging from reversed versions of Bouba-like and Kiki-like words and natural real object sounds to even pure tones. The effect was strongly correlated with the mean frequency of a sound independent of its pronounceability. Thus, the Bouba-Kiki effect reflects generic associations between sounds and object shape rather than mouth shape.