Reposted by Meltem Yucel
NEW: In March the White House released an FY27 budget request that zeroed out the National Science Foundation's directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE). For months it was unclear what would happen. Now, with FY26 over, the damage to SBE is coming to light.
My reporting:
science.org
‘Complete devastation’: How NSF gutted its social sciences research
Agency body that funds sociology, linguistics, and archaeology studies in U.S. gave 90% fewer new grants this year
![Matching sounds to shapes: Evidence of the bouba-kiki effect in naïve baby chicks Maria Loconsole1*, Silvia Benavides-Varela2,3, Lucia Regolin1 Humans across multiple languages spontaneously associate the nonwords “kiki” and “bouba” with spiky and round shapes, respectively, a phenomenon named the bouba-kiki effect. To explore the origin of this association, and whether it is unique to humans, we tested the bouba-kiki effect in baby domestic chickens (Gallus gallus). as a precocial species, chicks can be tested shortly after hatching, allowing us to control their pretest experiences. Similar to humans, both 3-day-old [experiment 1 (exp. 1)] and 1-day-old (exp. 2) chicks spontaneously choose a spiky shape when hearing the “kiki” sound and a round shape when hearing the “bouba” sound. results from naïve young animals suggest a predisposed mechanism for matching the dimensions of shape and sound, which may be widespread across species.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:v6qwaqo24zfrq5fj7ceibxqk/bafkreigaspshdrleahxzyp6b6rjodus6gk4zcoaw77smu7olklmbshdx74)
