TL;DR
A study of 70 domestic dogs found they looked more at a rounded shape when they heard “Bouba” and at a spiky shape when they heard “Kiki.” The results suggest dogs may share a sound-shape association seen in humans, but the researchers say more work is needed to establish how reliably dogs make this connection and what explains it.
A study involving 70 domestic dogs found that the animals looked more at a rounded shape while hearing “Bouba” and at a spiky shape while hearing “Kiki,” researchers report. The findings extend a familiar human sound-and-shape association to dogs, although the study does not establish why the pattern occurs or whether it is a consistent canine ability.
Animal behaviorist Eleonora Biffi of the University of Parma led the research, which used two experiments with dogs watching shapes on screens while the words were played through speakers. In the first experiment, 51 dogs took part with their owners in the room. The sounds and shapes appeared in different combinations on screens placed to the left and right, and researchers recorded the dogs during trials lasting roughly 15 minutes.
A second experiment involved 19 other dogs and used the same setup, but owners wore headphones playing rock music so they could not hear the words. The researchers used an AI system to track the direction of each dog’s head as an indicator of where it was looking. Across the study, the team reported that dogs looked more at the rounded shape during “Bouba” and looked at and explored the spiky shape during “Kiki.”
The two experiments did not produce identical patterns in every respect. Dogs in the first group showed an overall tendency to look at the spiky shapes, while that general bias was absent in the second group. The researchers say the result is an initial finding, not definitive proof that dogs associate the two made-up words with particular shapes.
A Possible Link Between Dog Hearing and Vision
The result may offer a way to investigate how dogs connect spoken sounds with visual information. Humans commonly match “Bouba” with rounded forms and “Kiki” with angular ones, despite the words having no fixed meaning. Finding a similar response in dogs could help researchers ask whether some sound-shape associations are shared across species or arise through different routes.
That question matters because dogs are attentive to human communication and have lived alongside people for generations. The study does not show that dogs understand the words as labels, or that they interpret shapes as humans do. It records patterns of looking and exploration under a particular experimental setup. Follow-up work could test whether the association holds across different dogs, sounds, shapes, and settings, and whether experience with people affects it.
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The Bouba-Kiki Test in Dogs
The Bouba-Kiki effect is a sound-symbolism finding: when people are asked to match invented words to shapes, many choose a rounded shape for “Bouba” and an angular or spiky one for “Kiki.” The effect has been reported across people who use different languages and writing systems. It concerns a tendency in matching sounds and shapes, not a universal rule about what the words mean.
The dog study adapted that basic test by showing shapes and playing the spoken words, then measuring where the animals directed their attention. In the owner-present experiment, people could hear the words; the headphone condition was designed to reduce the possibility that dogs were responding to cues from their owners. The research was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
““Dogs looked significantly more at the rounded shape while ‘Bouba’ was played, and they looked at and explored the spiky shape when ‘Kiki’ was played.””
— Eleonora Biffi and co-authors
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What the Dog Responses Establish
The study does not establish that dogs have a stable, universal “Bouba-Kiki” association. The researchers describe the results as a starting point, and the difference between experiments leaves open whether owner presence, the dogs’ general preferences, or other features of the setup affected their attention. The study measured head direction and exploration, which indicate looking behavior but do not reveal what a dog understood.
It is also unclear why the dogs showed the reported pattern. The authors discuss possible owner cues and a potential contrast between canine and human facial shapes, but neither explanation is confirmed by these experiments. The source report does not provide enough detail to assess how the effect might vary by breed, age, prior training, or familiarity with the words.
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Further Tests of Canine Sound Matching
The immediate next step is additional research testing the association with more dogs and variations in the experimental design. Researchers could compare responses when owners are absent or cannot see the shapes, and check whether dogs respond similarly to new voices, word pronunciations, and visual forms. Those tests could help separate a sound-shape association from attention to people or preferences for particular shapes.
No follow-up study or specific next publication date is identified in the source material. For now, the reported finding is evidence of a pattern in one set of experiments, not a settled account of how dogs connect sounds and shapes.
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Key Questions
What did the dogs do when they heard “Bouba” and “Kiki”?
Researchers reported that dogs looked more at a rounded shape during “Bouba” and looked at and explored a spiky shape during “Kiki.”
How many dogs took part?
The study included 70 domestic dogs: 51 in an experiment with their owners able to hear the sounds and 19 in a second experiment where owners wore headphones playing rock music.
Does the study prove dogs understand the words?
No. It measured where dogs looked and whether they explored the shapes. The findings suggest a possible association, but do not show that dogs understand “Bouba” or “Kiki” as meaningful labels.
Why did the researchers use headphones in the second experiment?
The headphones were intended to prevent owners from hearing the words, reducing the chance that dogs were responding to unintentional cues from them.
What remains unknown?
Researchers have not established why the dogs showed the pattern, how consistently it occurs, or whether it varies with factors such as breed, training, or owner presence. Further tests are needed.
Source: hn
