Shaking Takete and Flowing Maluma. Non-Sense Words Are Associated with Motion Patterns

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Psycholinguistics
• Human Motion Analysis

Background:

• The Bouba/Kiki effect demonstrates a cross-modal correspondence between speech sounds and visual shapes.
• This phenomenon suggests that abstract features of sensory information can be mapped across different modalities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if cross-modal correspondences, similar to the Bouba/Kiki effect, exist for human body motion.
• To determine if abstract qualities like angularity and smoothness in movement align with specific artificial words.

Main Methods:

• Body movements were captured, digitized, and animated as stick-figure representations.
• Participants rated these animations using word pairs (takete-maluma, bouba-kiki) and descriptors of angularity/smoothness.
• Quantitative motion features (quantity, velocity, angle changes) were extracted from movement data.

Main Results:

• Judgments of 'takete' correlated with angularity, high motion quantity, high velocity, and sharp angle changes.
• 'Maluma' judgments aligned with smooth movements, low velocity, lower motion quantity, and blunter angles.
• Forced-choice tasks confirmed preference for 'takete' with fast, sharp movements and 'maluma' with slow, smooth movements.

Conclusions:

• Human body motion possesses features that correspond with abstract properties of words like 'takete' and 'maluma'.
• Individuals perceive body movements based on changes in motion direction, linking them to perceived angularity or smoothness.
• Further research is needed to explore the communicative value of these cross-modal perceptions in social contexts.