TY - JOUR
T1 - Crossmodal visuospatial effects on auditory perception of musical contour
AU - Lacey, Simon
AU - Nguyen, James
AU - Schneider, Peter
AU - Sathian, K.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by NIH grant R01EY025978 (PIs: KS and Lynne Nygaard); support for KS from the Veterans Administration is also acknowledged. We thank Eliza Donne, Multimedia Specialist, Harrell Health Sciences Library, Penn State College of Medicine, for creating the audiovisual stimuli.
Publisher Copyright:
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - The crossmodal correspondence between auditory pitch and visuospatial elevation (in which high- and low-pitched tones are associated with high and low spatial elevation respectively) has been proposed as the basis for Western musical notation. One implication of this is that music perception engages visuospatial processes and may not be exclusively auditory. Here, we investigated how music perception is influenced by concurrent visual stimuli. Participants listened to unfamiliar five-note musical phrases with four kinds of pitch contour (rising, falling, rising-falling, or falling-rising), accompanied by incidental visual contours that were either congruent (e.g., auditory rising/visual rising) or incongruent (e.g., auditory rising/visual falling) and judged whether the final note of the musical phrase was higher or lower in pitch than the first. Response times for the auditory judgment were significantly slower for incongruent compared to congruent trials, i.e., there was a congruency effect, even though the visual contours were incidental to the auditory task. These results suggest that music perception, although generally regarded as an auditory experience, may actually be multisensory in nature.
AB - The crossmodal correspondence between auditory pitch and visuospatial elevation (in which high- and low-pitched tones are associated with high and low spatial elevation respectively) has been proposed as the basis for Western musical notation. One implication of this is that music perception engages visuospatial processes and may not be exclusively auditory. Here, we investigated how music perception is influenced by concurrent visual stimuli. Participants listened to unfamiliar five-note musical phrases with four kinds of pitch contour (rising, falling, rising-falling, or falling-rising), accompanied by incidental visual contours that were either congruent (e.g., auditory rising/visual rising) or incongruent (e.g., auditory rising/visual falling) and judged whether the final note of the musical phrase was higher or lower in pitch than the first. Response times for the auditory judgment were significantly slower for incongruent compared to congruent trials, i.e., there was a congruency effect, even though the visual contours were incidental to the auditory task. These results suggest that music perception, although generally regarded as an auditory experience, may actually be multisensory in nature.
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U2 - 10.1163/22134808-bja10034
DO - 10.1163/22134808-bja10034
M3 - Article
C2 - 33706275
AN - SCOPUS:85101489999
SN - 2213-4794
VL - 34
SP - 113
EP - 127
JO - Multisensory Research
JF - Multisensory Research
IS - 2
ER -