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I know that "Kiki" is angular: The metacognition underlying sound-shape correspondences
Yi-Chuan Chen1,2, Pi-Chun Huang3, Andy Woods4
1Department of Medicine, Mackay Medical College, No.46, Sec.3, Zhongzheng Rd., New Taipei City, Sanzhi Dist., 252, Taiwan. ycchen@mmc.edu.tw.
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
|August 12, 2018
Summary
People
Area of Science:
- Cognitive psychology
- Crossmodal correspondences
- Human perception
Background:
- The Bouba/Kiki effect is a well-known crossmodal correspondence where rounded shapes are associated with the sound 'Bouba' and angular shapes with 'Kiki'.
- Understanding the basis of this effect involves exploring how perceptual features influence human judgments.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the relationship between confidence in perceptual judgments and the consensus response in the Bouba/Kiki effect.
- To determine if confidence and matching judgments share common underlying cognitive processes.
Main Methods:
- Participants made perceptual judgments matching visual patterns to either the 'Bouba' or 'Kiki' sound.
- Confidence ratings were collected for each matching judgment.
- Logit regression analyses were used to model the relationship between confidence, matching judgments, and consensual responses.
Main Results:
- Participant confidence was higher when their matching judgments aligned with the established consensus for the Bouba/Kiki effect.
- Regression analyses showed that confidence ratings and matching judgments were predictable by similar functions.
- This suggests a shared cognitive mechanism for both consensus and confidence.
Conclusions:
- The Bouba/Kiki effect's consensus and confidence stem from a common process of extracting perceptual features and applying crossmodal correspondence rules.
- Combining matching and confidence measures offers a way to quantify the strength of associations in human knowledge.
- This research deepens our understanding of crossmodal perception and cognitive confidence.
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