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In a study of 70 domestic dogs, researchers found that dogs looked more at rounded shapes while hearing “Bouba” and at spiky shapes while hearing “Kiki.” The results suggest dogs may connect speech sounds with visual shape, but the researchers say further work is needed to establish that interpretation.
In a study of 70 domestic dogs, researchers found that dogs looked more at a rounded shape while hearing “Bouba” and at a spiky shape while hearing “Kiki.” The findings, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, suggest dogs may connect speech sounds with visual shapes, though they do not yet establish how or why that association occurs.
Animal behaviorist Eleonora Biffi of the University of Parma in Italy led the research. The team divided the dogs between two experiments: 51 dogs took part in the first, and 19 different dogs took part in a second designed to test whether owners’ behavior could influence the results.
In both experiments, dogs saw two screens, with a speaker beside each one. The screens showed rounded and spiky shapes, which changed sides as a voice played either “Bouba” or “Kiki.” Researchers recorded the dogs and later used AI-assisted video analysis to estimate where they were looking from the direction of their heads. The team compared those observations with what might be expected by chance.
The researchers reported that dogs looked significantly more at the rounded shape when “Bouba” played, and looked at and explored the spiky shape when “Kiki” played. In the first experiment, dogs also showed an overall tendency to look at spiky shapes. That general bias was absent in the second experiment, where owners wore headphones playing rock music so they could not hear the test words. The difference raises questions about what influenced dogs’ attention, even though the sound-shape pattern appeared in the overall findings.
What the Sound-Shape Link Could Mean
The results add dogs to research on whether the association between certain sounds and visual forms extends beyond humans. The words in the test were made-up labels, not commands with known meanings for the dogs. If dogs reliably respond differently to the sounds, that could offer a way to study how they perceive vocal sounds and visual information together.
The finding is not evidence that dogs understand the words as people do, or that they share the same mental concepts of “round” and “spiky.” The test measured looking and exploration, which provide behavioral clues but cannot, by themselves, show what a dog thought. The work is a starting point for investigating how dogs process human speech and how their long relationship with people may have shaped that ability.
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The Bouba-Kiki Test in Dogs
The bouba-kiki effect describes a common response in human experiments: when people are asked to match the invented words “Bouba” and “Kiki” with shapes, many associate “Bouba” with a rounded form and “Kiki” with an angular one. The original report says the pattern has been observed across people using different languages and writing systems. The dog study asks whether a similar sound-shape association might be detectable in another species.
Biffi’s team used two related experiments rather than relying on owners to interpret their dogs’ responses. In the second, the owners could not hear the words, a design intended to reduce the possibility that they might unconsciously signal which screen the dogs should attend to. The study’s recorded behavior and video analysis offered a structured way to compare attention across the sound and shape pairings.
““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 colleagues, as reported in the study
Limits of the Dog Attention Results
The study does not establish that dogs have a human-like understanding of shape or that they consciously associate the words with geometric properties. Its main measure was head direction as a proxy for looking, alongside observed exploration. The report also does not provide enough detail here to assess the size of the effects or how consistently individual dogs showed the pattern.
The difference between the experiments remains open to interpretation. The spiky-shape bias seen among the 51 dogs in the first test disappeared when the 19 dogs in the second test had owners wearing headphones. The researchers discuss possible owner cues and dogs’ facial features as explanations, but neither is confirmed. More studies would be needed to determine whether the association is robust and what drives it.
Further Tests of Canine Sound Associations
The immediate next step is further research to see whether the result can be repeated with additional dogs and different study designs. Researchers could test whether dogs respond to other sound-shape pairings, and whether results hold when owner influence is controlled in the same way across larger groups. The source material does not identify a scheduled follow-up study.
For now, the published findings offer an initial behavioral result rather than a settled account of canine perception. Further work could clarify whether dogs connect speech sounds and visual forms in a consistent way, and how that capacity relates to their responses to human language.
Key Questions
What did the study find?
Researchers reported that dogs looked more at rounded shapes while hearing “Bouba” and at spiky shapes while hearing “Kiki.”
How many dogs participated?
Seventy domestic dogs took part: 51 in the first experiment and 19 in the second.
How did researchers measure what dogs noticed?
The team recorded the dogs and used AI-assisted analysis of their head direction as an estimate of where they were looking. Researchers also observed whether they explored the shapes.
Does this prove dogs understand the words?
No. The study measured attention and exploration, not whether dogs understood the words or thought about shapes as humans do. The researchers say more research is needed.
Why did some owners wear headphones?
In the second experiment, owners wore headphones playing rock music so they could not hear the test words. This was intended to reduce the chance that unintentional owner cues influenced the dogs.
Source: hn
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