Pejovic, J. , Molnar, M. & Martin, C.
Basque Center on Cognition, Brain, and Language, Donostia, Spain
Sound-shape correspondence represents a bias in multisensory integration between acoustic and visual information, specifically between the label (auditory) and shape (visual) of an object. For instance, participants tend to associate the pseudo-word (PW) kiki with angular objects, but the PW bouba with rounded objects. This bias is known as the bouba-kiki effect and it has been observed in both monolingual adults (Nielsen&Rendall, 2011) and infants (Ozturk, et al., 2012) from various language backgrounds. However, it is unclear whether this effect is specific to the combination of phonemes found in bouba and kiki or the effect can be overextended to other PWs specific to the participants? native language background(s). Therefore, the aim of the current set of experiments is to identify PWs that are associated with angular and round shapes by adult monolingual and bilingual users of Basque and Spanish; as well as to test whether infants exhibit similar biases. In Experiment 1, 6 Spanish, 6 Basque monolinguals and 6 Basque-Spanish bilingual adults rated auditory PWs on four dimensions: roundness, angularness, Spanish-likeness, and Basque-likeness. Overall, the Spanish and bilingual groups rated the PWs as significantly more Basque-like than the Basque group; the Spanish group rated the PWs as significantly more round than the bilingual and Basque group. To test whether Basque-Spanish monolingual and bilingual infants exhibit similar sensitivities to shapes and sounds as adults do, we have selected two pairs of native language-appropriate stimuli based on Experiment 1: rounded PW vs. angular PW; neutral PW vs. neutral PW. These pairs, in different experiments, have been presented to 4-month-old infants using a preference looking paradigm in response to congruent (shape-sound match based on adult ratings) and incongruent (shape-sound mismatch based on adult ratings). Preliminary infant results in relation to the adult findings will be discussed.