Which Image Represents "BUBA" and "KIKI"?

[siddharth]

In the image below, you'll see two shapes, one of which is orange, and the other is purple.

One of the images stands for the word "BUBA", and the other stands for the word "KIKI"

The question of this poll is:

In your opinion, which image best represents "KIKI" and which represents "BUBA"?

I'm trying to verify a test, so those of you who've seen this before, please don't vote.

 

[Mk]

Well I kind of look at the image and think that shapes don't really have names.

At first I read kiki and though "oh, that's of course the purple one" because it looked kind of tropical tome, but then I didn't think "buba" was the orange one.

 

[Moonbear]

Star and inkblot come to mind for me.

 

[arildno]

On mere phonetic "grounds", I'd say the softer sounding "Buba" corresponds better to the softer purple figure than the spiky orange one.

 

[turbo]

On mere phonetic "grounds", I'd say the softer sounding "Buba" corresponds better to the softer purple figure than the spiky orange one.

The poll bears you out. I voted before reading posts so I wouldn't be swayed, and you nailed my thoughts exactly. I doubt that changing the colors would change the poll much.

 

[arildno]

I've heard about onomatopoeitika, that is "sound-descriptive" words. (Like "mooh", "oink", "wham")

But I don't know if there is a technical term for "phonetic analogies" as in this case, or if we have some undisputed real examples of it in normal language.

 

[Math Jeans]

Kiki is probably much better for the orange on as ki is a much sharper tone than buba, which corresponds better to a softer edged figure.

 

[arildno]

I am quite certain that we are "figure"-dominant, rather than "colour"-dominant.

While I sort of agree that orange is a "spikier" colour than purple, and on pure "colour grounds" I'd say kiki represents orange better than purple, I am sure that if we switched the colours, the spiky star would still be the one called kiki by most.

 

[radou]

I am quite certain that we are "figure"-dominant, rather than "colour"-dominant.

In this case yes, but I'm not sure about that in general.

 

[Moonbear]

Funny...for me it's more an alliteration of the other words I'd use. Blob, bubble, buba. Kiki only goes with the star by default, because it doesn't seem to fit the blob at all, but it also doesn't really fit a star for me either (maybe because I still associate that sort of star with the old Batman TV series where it would be filled with words like "Kablooey" "POW!" or "Blam"). Kiki sounds too cute for such a violently explosive star.

So, I think I'm going to go with the "no idea" option, since I can only fit one of the words to a picture and not both.

 

[Chi Meson]

Which one is Zing-zing-zingbah?

 

[Evo]

For me it was word association. Kiki is spikey, so it's the orange figure.

 

[dlgoff]

Kiki is probably much better for the orange on as ki is a much sharper tone than buba, which corresponds better to a softer edged figure.

This is just about what I was thinking. High freq./sharp ki and low freq./round bu.

 

[Gale]

i thought kiki was the purple one. Kiki is a funky, female name, that i associate with the curvy purple one. Buba is masculine which i associated with the orange spikey one. After I voted I thought of the phonetic approach, but I went with my first instinct.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Gale, I was about to post almost exactly the same thing. To me, the gender sound of the word dictated the association.

Kiki is the feminine - the purple one - due to the soft curves and color.

Kiki Dee is the stage name of a famous female song writer and vocalist.

 

[Gale]

Gale, I was about to post almost exactly the same thing. To me, the gender sound of the word dictated the association.

Kiki is the feminine - the purple one - due to the soft curves and color.

Kiki Dee is the stage name of a famous female song writer and vocalist.

Well, If I'm in the minority as far as the poll goes, at least I'm in good company. I think I was the first one to vote, and I was rather surprised to come back and realize my brain way off the same wavelength as everyone else. I think its cause of a cartoon about a cute little witch named kiki I think. I think she may even have worn purple..

edit:
Yeah, I was right about the little girl

http://www.filmservisi.com/tsrm/2/otomatik_film_girisi/filmden_kareler/1228/1.jpg

 

[moose]

Kiki sounds sharper

Also, to me the orange star looks more feminine than the blob, which I view as more masculine.

 

[DaveC426913]

Gale, I was about to post almost exactly the same thing. To me, the gender sound of the word dictated the association.

So you two fail the test.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

My first impression was that Buba was masculine and therefore sharp-edged, while Kiki was feminine and therefore soft and round. This was based on the characters Bubba from Forest Gump, and Kiki from Kiki's delivery service. On second thought, I also noticed that the shape of the letters in BUBA are (except for the A) rounded and in KIKI are angular. Also, KIKI has a sharp sound to it an BUBA a soft one. Then I was reminded of the Yiddish word for grandma which is Bubba. I don't know what the quiz tries to measure, but it seem to me that there are so many different good reasons for choosing one over the other, that it may fail to measure anything at all. I can't wait for the punchline.

 

[Kurdt]

It could just be measuring whether people associate gender to words or whether they merely think phonetically about them. Many languages have grammatical genders, but in recent times since gender equality came along there have been calls by some countries at least to make their languages gender neutral. English is relatively gender free, so in this poll I'm not particularly surprised that most people have gone for the phonetic association. It would be interesting repeating it on a German speaking forum or a French one.

However I could be completely wrong.

 

[arildno]

Well, I also thought along gender lines yesterday, and I certainly agree to that "kiki" is more feminine than "buba".

Also, "kiki" has a young sound, wheras "buba" has an "oldish" sound.

 

[Moonbear]

I also wonder if the order the words are presented in the question biases the result? If the thread started out, which is Buba and which is Kiki, instead of vice versa, or presented the purple blob first, might people make opposite associations just based on word order meaning something to them?

 

[Kurdt]

Just wondering how the association came about when I remembered the ancient Greek for a swelling or lump is Bubo. Wonder if there is something similar to kiki that goes that far back or does bubo come about because of phonetic association.

 

[arildno]

I also wonder if the order the words are presented in the question biases the result? If the thread started out, which is Buba and which is Kiki, instead of vice versa, or presented the purple blob first, might people make opposite associations just based on word order meaning something to them?

The main trouble with these association "games" or studies is that not a sufficient set of control studies is made in order to rule out several interpretative possibilities.

 

[siddharth]

Interesting responses to the question!

I was watching this talk by the neurologist V.Ramachandran, when he asked the audience a similar question (except, the images where in black/white) and most of them picked the "sharper" one as kiki, similar to the trend in this poll.

He seems to suggest the way our brain relates visual information and the sharpness in sound is similar to synesthesa, and that this might have played a role in the evolution of language.

The tendency for people to associate the spikier image with kiki is called the Bouba-Kiki effect.

Here's the paper where he outlines the experiment.

http://psy.ucsd.edu/~edhubbard/papers/JCS.pdf

And while on the subject of relating visual and sound information, have you "heard" of the McGurk effect?

 

[Astronuc]

I went by sound - Kiki is sharper/harder - Bouba (Buba) is rounder or more blunt/softer (along the lines of comments of Evo, Math Jeans and dlgoff). Color didn't have anything to do with it for me. I go by shape visually rather than color.

I did not apply a gender consideration - and frankly I don't see where gender would be a consideration. But then that's just me.

I think this distinction is reflected in Germanic and Slavic languages, and perhaps others too.