An association between certain sounds and spiky or round shapes, which is common to humans from cultures all over the world, appears to be shared by dogs. Since 2001, many studies have reported that people are much more likely to give the made-up name “bouba” to a curved shape and “kiki” to a spiky shape. The effect has recently been shown in chicks and possibly macaques, too.
Eleonora Biffi at the University of Parma, Italy, and her colleagues decided to test whether pet dogs have the same tendency. In the first experiment, 51 owners sat with their adult dogs, holding them during the experiment. They were shown a rounded shape on a panel on one side of the room and a spiky shape on the other.
When they heard the word “bouba”56 per cent of the dogs lingered on the round shape. When they heard “kiki”, 63 per cent concentrated their gaze on the spiky shape. To make sure the dogs weren’t influenced by their owners, the team repeated the experiment with the owners wearing headphones playing music so they couldn’t hear the words.
The outcome was the same, with a slightly stronger bias towards round shapes for the word “bouba”. To investigate this, Biffi says the team is now collecting data on puppies and wild canids, including foxes, and also wants to see if the effect exists in cats. Attila Andics at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary says the study suggests the matching of speech sounds to shapes relies on general mechanisms rather than complex linguistic representations.
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