Piller, Sophia and Senna, Irene and Ernst, Marc O (2023) Visual experience shapes the Bouba‑Kiki effect and the size‑weight illusion upon sight restoration from congenital blindness. Scientific Reports, 13. p. 11435. ISSN 2045-2322
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Abstract
The Bouba-Kiki effect is the systematic mapping between round/spiky shapes and speech sounds
(“Bouba”/“Kiki”). In the size-weight illusion, participants judge the smaller of two equallyweighted
objects as being heavier. Here we investigated the contribution of visual experience to
the development of these phenomena. We compared three groups: early blind individuals (no visual
experience), individuals treated for congenital cataracts years after birth (late visual experience),
and typically sighted controls (visual experience from birth). We found that, in cataract-treated
participants (tested visually/visuo-haptically), both phenomena are absent shortly after sight onset,
just like in blind individuals (tested haptically). However, they emerge within months following
surgery, becoming statistically indistinguishable from the sighted controls. This suggests a pivotal
role of visual experience and refutes the existence of an early sensitive period: A short period of
experience, even when gained only years after birth, is sufficient for participants to visually pick-up
regularities in the environment, contributing to the development of these phenomena.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information and Comments: | Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Faculty / Department: | Faculty of Human and Digital Sciences > School of Psychology |
| Depositing User: | Irene Senna |
| Date Deposited: | 17 Jul 2023 08:24 |
| Last Modified: | 17 Jul 2023 08:24 |
| URI: | https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/3989 |
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