TY - JOUR

T1 - Bo-NO-bouba-kiki

T2 - Picture-word mapping but no spontaneous sound symbolic speech-shape mapping in a language trained bonobo

AU - Margiotoudi, Konstantina

AU - Bohn, Manuel

AU - Schwob, Natalie

AU - Taglialatela, Jared

AU - Pulvermüller, Friedemann

AU - Epping, Amanda

AU - Schweller, Ken

AU - Allritz, Matthias

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Authors.

PY - 2022/2/9

Y1 - 2022/2/9

N2 - Humans share the ability to intuitively map 'sharp' or 'round' pseudowords, such as 'bouba' versus 'kiki', to abstract edgy versus round shapes, respectively. This effect, known as sound symbolism, appears early in human development. The phylogenetic origin of this phenomenon, however, is unclear: are humans the only species capable of experiencing correspondences between speech sounds and shapes, or could similar effects be observed in other animals? Thus far, evidence from an implicit matching experiment failed to find evidence of this sound symbolic matching in great apes, suggesting its human uniqueness. However, explicit tests of sound symbolism have never been conducted with nonhuman great apes. In the present study, a language-competent bonobo completed a cross-modal matching-to-sample task in which he was asked to match spoken English words to pictures, as well as 'sharp' or 'round' pseudowords to shapes. Sound symbolic trials were interspersed among English words. The bonobo matched English words to pictures with high accuracy, but did not show any evidence of spontaneous sound symbolic matching. Our results suggest that speech exposure/comprehension alone cannot explain sound symbolism. This lends plausibility to the hypothesis that biological differences between human and nonhuman primates could account for the putative human specificity of this effect.

AB - Humans share the ability to intuitively map 'sharp' or 'round' pseudowords, such as 'bouba' versus 'kiki', to abstract edgy versus round shapes, respectively. This effect, known as sound symbolism, appears early in human development. The phylogenetic origin of this phenomenon, however, is unclear: are humans the only species capable of experiencing correspondences between speech sounds and shapes, or could similar effects be observed in other animals? Thus far, evidence from an implicit matching experiment failed to find evidence of this sound symbolic matching in great apes, suggesting its human uniqueness. However, explicit tests of sound symbolism have never been conducted with nonhuman great apes. In the present study, a language-competent bonobo completed a cross-modal matching-to-sample task in which he was asked to match spoken English words to pictures, as well as 'sharp' or 'round' pseudowords to shapes. Sound symbolic trials were interspersed among English words. The bonobo matched English words to pictures with high accuracy, but did not show any evidence of spontaneous sound symbolic matching. Our results suggest that speech exposure/comprehension alone cannot explain sound symbolism. This lends plausibility to the hypothesis that biological differences between human and nonhuman primates could account for the putative human specificity of this effect.

KW - bouba-kiki

KW - Kanzi

KW - language evolution

KW - sound symbolism

KW - Psychology

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85124059176&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1098/rspb.2021.1717

DO - 10.1098/rspb.2021.1717

M3 - Journal articles

C2 - 35105236

AN - SCOPUS:85124059176

VL - 289

JO - Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

JF - Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

SN - 0962-8452

IS - 1968

M1 - 20211717

ER -