No abstract

Studies have suggested that visual imagery forms an important part of the listening experience, and might be one of the mechanisms by which music induces emotions in a listener. However, little is known about the content, prevalence and functions of visual imagery during music listening. To that end, an online survey was constructed to explore music-related visual imagery. This included 24 statements about the visual imagery based on prior research and an open question about the content of the inner images. Several standardized questionnaires (VVIQ, Gold-MSI) were included as well to investigate the link to visual imagery in general and musical training. In total, 669 participants provided responses to an online survey. A factorial structure of music and visual imagery statements provided a 3-factor structure consisting of vivid, soothing and disruptive visual imagery, although the actual factor structure was non-identical between the musically trained and untrained respondents. Separate analyses of factor for musically trained and untrained participants yielded a more parsimonious structure of visual imagery, which consisted of vivid and soothing visual imagery. These two factors exhibited consistently different weights across the items; for musically trained participants, the vivid imagery was more related to modulating the arousal. The ability to conjure up vivid visual imagery was only weakly related to the music-related visual imagery. A content analysis of the open question revealed common themes that related to a mixture of concrete visual imagery (landscapes, images of people, scenes from past events) and abstract visual imagery (shapes, objects and colours). Implications of these findings for further studies on music-induced emotions are discussed with a focus on a recent constructionist account of emotional meanings in music.

Cross-modal mappings of auditory stimuli reveal valuable insights into how humans make sense of sound and music. Whereas researchers have investigated cross-modal mappings of sound features varied in isolation within paradigms such as speeded classification and forced-choice matching tasks, investigations of representations of concurrently varied sound features (e.g., pitch, loudness and tempo) with overt gestures—accounting for the intrinsic link between movement and sound—are scant. To explore the role of bodily gestures in cross-modal mappings of auditory stimuli we asked 64 musically trained and untrained participants to represent pure tones—continually sounding and concurrently varied in pitch, loudness and tempo—with gestures while the sound stimuli were played. We hypothesized musical training to lead to more consistent mappings between pitch and height, loudness and distance/height, and tempo and speed of hand movement and muscular energy. Our results corroborate previously reported pitch vs. height (higher pitch leading to higher elevation in space) and tempo vs. speed (increasing tempo leading to increasing speed of hand movement) associations, but also reveal novel findings pertaining to musical training which influenced consistency of pitch mappings, annulling a commonly observed bias for convex (i.e., rising–falling) pitch contours. Moreover, we reveal effects of interactions between musical parameters on cross-modal mappings (e.g., pitch and loudness on speed of hand movement), highlighting the importance of studying auditory stimuli concurrently varied in different musical parameters. Results are discussed in light of cross-modal cognition, with particular emphasis on studies within (embodied) music cognition. Implications for theoretical refinements and potential clinical applications are provided.

Visual mental imagery has been characterized as an important aspect of our mental life, which consists of "seeing" in the absence of a sensory stimulus. However, the mechanisms underlying how visual mental images unfold during music listening have remained largely neglected. Here, we review the existing literature on the relation between music-evoked emotions and images and we draw attention on how visual mental imagery has been previously conceptualized in the music domain. We also propose to adopt a conceptual framework from research on spontaneous cognition, which will promote a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of the different types of music-evoked visual mental imagery. Finally, we highlight how music's capability to trigger images can be harnessed in daily life as well as therapeutic practices to foster the benefits and minimize the costs of visual mental imagery.