快猫短视频

To humans, some words seem to fit better with sharp shapes or round shapes 鈥� and the same seems to be true for baby chicks.

Research has shown that people tend to associate the nonsense word 鈥渂ouba鈥� with round shapes and 鈥渒iki鈥� with spiky shapes. Many studies have found that the phenomenon is near-universal, applying in people across ages, cultures and languages.

鈥淭he effect is one example of sound symbolism, this spontaneous association between sounds and shapes,鈥� says at the University of Padua in Italy. 鈥淚t鈥檚 the building block of language in humans.鈥�

To explore whether this effect is learned through experience or whether it is a more innate characteristic of animals, Loconsole and her colleagues decided to put newborn chicks to the test.

Baby chicks were an obvious choice of subject, says Loconsole, as they are born with fully developed motor, visual and nervous systems. 鈥淎s soon as they hatch, we can immediately test the chicks and control the stimuli they are exposed to.鈥�

To begin with, the team took 42 3-day-old domestic chickens (Gallus gallus) one by one into a small arena with two panels: one blank and one with an ambiguous, spiky and round shape printed on it. Behind the panel with the shape was a mealworm for the chicks to find.

After roughly 10 minutes of familiarisation with the set-up, the team swapped out the panels for one with a completely round shape and one with a completely spiky shape. But this time there was no mealworm reward.

An audio recording of someone saying either bouba or kiki was then played while the chicks could freely move around the arena. Each chick underwent 24 trials, with the team switching up the order of panels and which word was played every time.

Overall, the chicks were much more likely to approach the round shape when they heard 鈥渂ouba鈥� and the spiky shape when they heard 鈥渒iki鈥�.

鈥淲e didn鈥檛 expect the effect to be so stable and so strong,鈥� says Loconsole. 鈥淲e were very excited.鈥�

Being able to link certain sounds with specific symbols or shapes can help animals explore and even make some predictions about the world, she says. For example, they might associate the sound of a predator with their shape and know to stay away. 鈥淭his is the first essential step in discarding the idea that sound symbolism is uniquely human,鈥� says Loconsole.

鈥淭he finding is definitely significant since it shows that newborn chicks show a spontaneous preference for choosing spiky or round shapes depending on whether they hear the sound kiki or bouba,鈥� says at the Indian Institute of Science. 鈥淚t suggests that the bouba-kiki effect in humans is probably not driven by speech or language but rather by automatic associations between shapes and sounds that we experience in the world.鈥�