The bouba/kiki effect is an interesting discovery in the same vein, though a much older discovery, and using made-up things and made-up words. I'm sceptical that everything can be boiled down to...
The bouba/kiki effect is an interesting discovery in the same vein, though a much older discovery, and using made-up things and made-up words. I'm sceptical that everything can be boiled down to influence from a shared proto-language from way back. The idea that "k" is a sharper sound than "b" isn't just in our heads: you can define it physically, as well. I don't think it's too far a stretch to think that synesthesia (sharp shape -> sharp sound) could happen spontaneously in similar ways in unconnected populations.
The results from this article are a little bit less precise (not just one or two sounds correlating, but many). It's kind of amazing to wonder about how much of that is due to old languages influencing one another and how much of that is due to shared psychology in human populations leading to common emergent behaviour. I don't think we know enough about thousands-year-old languages to say exactly one way or the other how these played out.
This part is very interesting. I wonder if there are other synesthesic phenomena that autistic people are less prone to.
Autistic individuals do not show as strong a preference. Individuals without autism agree with the standard result 88% of the time, while individuals with autism agree only 56% of the time.
This part is very interesting. I wonder if there are other synesthesic phenomena that autistic people are less prone to.
The bouba/kiki effect is an interesting discovery in the same vein, though a much older discovery, and using made-up things and made-up words. I'm sceptical that everything can be boiled down to influence from a shared proto-language from way back. The idea that "k" is a sharper sound than "b" isn't just in our heads: you can define it physically, as well. I don't think it's too far a stretch to think that synesthesia (sharp shape -> sharp sound) could happen spontaneously in similar ways in unconnected populations.
The results from this article are a little bit less precise (not just one or two sounds correlating, but many). It's kind of amazing to wonder about how much of that is due to old languages influencing one another and how much of that is due to shared psychology in human populations leading to common emergent behaviour. I don't think we know enough about thousands-year-old languages to say exactly one way or the other how these played out.
This part is very interesting. I wonder if there are other synesthesic phenomena that autistic people are less prone to.