People have been shown to link particular sounds with particular shapes. For instance, the round-sounding nonword bouba tends to be associated with curved shapes, whereas the sharp-sounding nonword kiki is deemed to be related to angular shapes. People’s tendency to associate sounds and shapes has been observed across different languages. In the present study, we reexamined the claim by Hung, Styles, and Hsieh (2017) that such sound–shape mappings can occur before an individual becomes aware of the visual stimuli. More precisely, we replicated their first experiment, in which congruent and incongruent stimuli (e.g., bouba presented in a round shape or an angular shape, respectively) were rendered invisible through continuous flash suppression. The results showed that congruent combinations, on average, broke suppression faster than incongruent combinations, thus providing converging evidence for Hung and colleagues’ assertions. Collectively, these findings now provide a solid basis from which to explore the boundary conditions of the effect.

中文翻译：

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无意识中的声音象征效应：一项复制研究

人们已被证明会将特定的声音与特定的形状联系起来。例如，听起来圆润的非单词 bouba 倾向于与弯曲形状相关联，而听起来尖锐的非单词 kiki 被认为与角形状相关。人们在不同语言中都观察到了将声音和形状联系起来的倾向。在本研究中，我们重新审视了 Hung、Styles 和 Hsieh (2017) 的说法，即这种声音形状映射可以在个人意识到视觉刺激之前发生。更准确地说，我们复制了他们的第一个实验，其中一致和不一致的刺激（例如，分别以圆形或角形呈现的布巴）通过连续闪光抑制变得不可见。结果表明，全等组合平均而言，与不一致的组合相比，打破抑制的速度更快，从而为 Hung 及其同事的断言提供了收敛证据​​。总的来说，这些发现现在为探索效应的边界条件提供了坚实的基础。