The Lexical Tones of Mandarin Matter in the Bouba-Kiki Effect: Evidence That the Lexical Tone Effect Occurs in Explicit but Not Implicit Tasks

We investigated how lexical tones and vowels drive the sound symbolism of Mandarin speakers using explicit and implicit measures. The results showed that the tones influenced the explicit measure, whereas the vowels influenced both measures, indicating different underlying mechanisms responsible for tones and vowels in sound symbolism.