The bouba-kiki effect is a classic quirk of human perception: most people match the made-up word "bouba" to a rounded shape and "kiki" to a jagged one. A new study suggests dogs do the same, according to New Scientist. When presented with the two nonsense words and two shapes, dogs tended to pair each word with the shape that humans would also choose.
This is not just a cute trick. The finding implies that the connection between certain sounds and visual features may not depend on language or culture, but on deeper brain processes that predate the human lineage. If dogs share the bias, it may have evolved long ago in a common ancestor or emerged independently as a general property of how brains process sensory information.
The study adds to evidence that some aspects of word-sound perception are more universal than previously assumed. Because the source reports on a single study, there are no conflicting findings to compare, but the authors' interpretation points toward shared mechanisms rather than learned associations.