Picture a rounded blob beside a pointed star. People commonly match the invented word “bouba” with the rounded figure and “kiki” with the pointed one. In two controlled experiments, 70 pet dogs displayed the same broad looking pattern.
The University of Parma team found that the dogs directed more attention toward the rounded shape when they heard “Bouba” and toward the spiky shape when they heard “Kiki.” The result raises the possibility that dogs share a basic sound-shape association found across human languages.
It does not establish that dogs understood either word. The experiment measured head direction as an approximation of gaze, leaving open what the animals perceived or how they processed the sounds.
How researchers tested the dogs
Animal behaviorist Eleonora Biffi led the research, which was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Each dog faced two screens and two speakers, with a rounded shape on one screen and a spiky shape on the other.
During sessions lasting about 15 minutes, the speakers played “Bouba” or “Kiki.” The shapes changed sides, helping the researchers distinguish shape-related attention from a dog’s general preference for looking left or right.
A GoPro recorded the dogs, and an artificial-intelligence system assessed their head direction. The model treated the dogs as looking at a screen when their estimated binocular field included it. The analysis focused on looking behavior during the first 20 seconds.
The first experiment included 51 dogs whose owners could hear the words. Those dogs followed the expected sound-shape pattern, but they also showed an overall preference for looking toward spiky shapes. That raised a question about whether owners might have provided unconscious cues.
The team addressed that concern in a second experiment involving 19 different dogs. Their owners wore headphones playing rock music, preventing them from hearing whether “Bouba” or “Kiki” was being played.
In that group, the general preference for spiky shapes disappeared while the central sound-shape matching remained. The result made owner influence a less likely explanation, although it did not identify the cognitive process behind the dogs’ choices.
A pattern with a long research history
The bouba-kiki effect traces back to experiments conducted in the 1920s. A 2022 study broadened the human evidence by testing 917 speakers of 25 languages representing nine language families and 10 writing systems. Most participants paired “bouba” with the rounded shape and “kiki” with the spiky one.
Related research has found the effect in chicks and possibly in macaques. The canine findings therefore fit a wider question in comparative cognition: whether sound symbolism depends on language or reflects more general ways that brains combine information from different senses.
If animals without human-like language also spontaneously associate sounds with shapes, this suggests that at least some of the mechanisms underlying sound symbolism may not be specific to language, Biffi said. Instead, they may reflect more general principles of how the brain integrates information from different senses.
Several limits remain. Head orientation is an indirect measure of gaze, and 70 dogs constitute a modest sample. Separate findings were not provided by breed, age or training history, so the study cannot show whether those factors affected the pattern.
The dogs’ prior experience with human speech also could matter. Researchers have not determined whether the association arises through experience, a more basic perceptual tendency or some combination of the two.
For owners, the finding is a point of scientific curiosity rather than guidance for selecting commands, praise or names. The study tested attention to unfamiliar sounds and shapes; it did not test obedience, learning speed or understanding of spoken language.
The intriguing result is narrow but clear: under these experimental conditions, the dogs’ looking behavior broadly matched a familiar human sound-shape pattern. Whether that tendency has shared evolutionary roots or carries the same meaning for dogs and people remains unproven.
What would you do if your dog were in this situation? Share your thoughts in the comments.
By Sarah Mitchell — 8 years as a local-news reporter covering animal welfare, shelters, neighborhood disputes, and public-safety pet stories.
