‘‘Bouba’’ and ‘‘Kiki’’ in Namibia? A remote culture make similar shape–sound matches, but different shape–taste matches to Westerners Andrew J. Bremner a,⇑ , Serge Caparos a , Jules Davidoff a , Jan de Fockert a , Karina J. Linnell a , Charles Spence b a Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK b Crossmodal Research Laboratory, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, UK article info Article history: Received 28 November 2011 Revised 4 September 2012 Accepted 10 September 2012 Available online 31 October 2012 Keywords: Cross-cultural Sound symbolism Shape symbolism Taste Flavour Crossmodal correspondence abstract Western participants consistently match certain shapes with particular speech sounds, tastes, and flavours. Here we demonstrate that the ‘‘Bouba-Kiki effect’’, a well-known shape–sound symbolism effect commonly observed in Western participants, is also obser- vable in the Himba of Northern Namibia, a remote population with little exposure to Wes- tern cultural and environmental influences, and who do not use a written language. However, in contrast to Westerners, the Himba did not map carbonation (in a sample of sparkling water) onto an angular (as opposed to a rounded) shape. Furthermore, they also tended to match less bitter (i.e., milk) chocolate samples to angular rather than rounded shapes; the opposite mapping to that shown by Westerners. Together, these results show that cultural–environmental as well as phylogenetic factors play a central role in shaping our repertoire of crossmodal correspondences. Ó 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Many studies now show that perceptual phenomena, of- ten assumed to be basic human endowments, vary from cul- ture to culture (e.g., Caparos et al., 2012; Davidoff, 2001; De Fockert, Davidoff, Fagot, Parron, & Goldstein, 2007; Doherty, Tsuji, & Phillips, 2008; Jones, 2010; Miyamoto, Nisbett, & Masuda, 2006; Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, 2001; Rivers, 1905). However, despite recent agreement that crossmodal interactions are pervasive in sensory processing (e.g., Stein, 2012), almost no research has investigated pos- sible cultural variations in multisensory processes (see Howes, 2006, on this point). This is surprising given the large body of evidence demonstrating that crossmodal interac- tions have substantial downstream effects on perception even from early stages in neural processing (e.g., Driver & Noesselt, 2008; Ghazanfar & Schroeder, 2006). Here we investigate whether multisensory shape-symbolism, previously established in Westerners, was also present in a remote population with little exposure to Western culture or artefacts, the Himba of Northern Namibia. Shape-symbolism describes a family of multisensory phenomena in which shapes (typically presented visually) give rise to, or at the very least are associated with, expe- riences in a different sensory modality. Shape-symbolism constitutes just one example of a much larger class of mul- tisensory phenomena in which the presentation of a stim- ulus in one sensory modality is associated with a sensation (or concept) in another sensory modality. Such phenomena have been studied for many years (see Spence, 2011, for a review) and have recently enjoyed particular attention gi- ven that the ability to make such links may help in localis- ing stimuli (Bien, ten Oever, Goebel, & Sack, 2012; Parise & Spence, 2009), and in solving the ‘‘crossmodal correspon- dence problem’’ (i.e., the problem of how to know which stimuli to link together across the senses) (Spence, 2011). It has also been proposed that shape-symbolism (also re- 0010-0277/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2012.09.007 ⇑ Corresponding author. Address: Department of Psychology, Gold- smiths, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW, UK. Tel.: +44 (0) 20 7078 5142; fax: +44 (0) 20 7919 7873. E-mail address: a.bremner@gold.ac.uk (A.J. Bremner). Cognition 126 (2013) 165–172 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Cognition journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/COGNIT