title: "Bouba" and "Kiki" in Namibia? A remote culture make similar shape-sound matches, but different shape-taste matches to Westerners.
abstract: Western participants consistently match certain shapes with particular speech sounds, tastes, and flavours. Here we demonstrate that the "Bouba-Kiki effect", a well-known shape-sound symbolism effect commonly observed in Western participants, is also observable in the Himba of Northern Namibia, a remote population with little exposure to Western cultural and environmental influences, and who do not use a written language. However, in contrast to Westerners, the Himba did not map carbonation (in a sample of sparkling water) onto an angular (as opposed to a rounded) shape. Furthermore, they also tended to match less bitter (i.e., milk) chocolate samples to angular rather than rounded shapes; the opposite mapping to that shown by Westerners. Together, these results show that cultural-environmental as well as phylogenetic factors play a central role in shaping our repertoire of crossmodal correspondences.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, London, UK. a.bremner@gold.ac.uk
authors.forename: Andrew J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Bremner
authors.forename: Serge
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Caparos
authors.forename: Jules
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Davidoff
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: de Fockert
authors.forename: Karina J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Linnell
authors.forename: Charles
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Spence
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D009276:Namibia; D010700:Phonetics; D013561:Symbolism; D013649:Taste / Q000502:physiology*; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000502:physiology*