Bo-NO-bouba-kiki: Picture-word mapping but no spontaneous sound symbolic speech-shape mapping in a language trained bonobo
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Bo-NO-bouba-kiki : Picture-word mapping but no spontaneous sound symbolic speech-shape mapping in a language trained bonobo. / Margiotoudi, Konstantina; Bohn, Manuel; Schwob, Natalie et al.
in: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Jahrgang 289, Nr. 1968, 20211717, 09.02.2022.Publikation: Beiträge in Zeitschriften › Zeitschriftenaufsätze › Forschung › begutachtet
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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 - Funding Information: This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany's Excellence Strategy through EXC 2025/1 ‘Matters of Activity (MoA)’ and by the ‘The Sound of Meaning (SOM)’, Pu 97/22–1 and ‘Phonological Networks (PhoNet)’, Pu 97/25-1. K.M. was supported by the Berlin School of Mind and Brain, by the Onassis foundation, and by the Fyssen foundation. M.A. was supported by the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement no. 609819, SOMICS. Acknowledgements Funding Information: This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany?s Excellence Strategy through EXC 2025/1 ?Matters of Activity (MoA)? and by the ?The Sound of Meaning (SOM)?, Pu 97/22?1 and ?Phonological Networks (PhoNet)?, Pu 97/25-1. K.M. was supported by the Berlin School of Mind and Brain, by the Onassis foundation, and by the Fyssen foundation. M.A. was supported by the European Research Council under the European Union?s Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement no. 609819, SOMICS. 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 -