Cross-Sensory Correspondences: Heaviness is Dark and Low-Pitched

Abstract

Everyday language reveals how stimuli encoded in one sensory feature domain can possess qualities normally associated with a different domain (e.g., higher pitch sounds are bright, light in weight, sharp, and thin). Such cross-sensory associations appear to reflect crosstalk among aligned (corresponding) feature dimensions, including brightness, heaviness, and sharpness. Evidence for heaviness being one such dimension is very limited, with heaviness appearing primarily as a verbal associate of other feature contrasts (e.g., darker objects and lower pitch sounds are heavier than their opposites). Given the presumed bidirectionality of the crosstalk between corresponding dimensions, heaviness should itself induce the cross-sensory associations observed elsewhere, including with brightness and pitch. Taking care to dissociate effects arising from the size and mass of an object, this is confirmed. When hidden objects varying independently in size and mass are lifted, objects that feel heavier are judged to be darker and to make lower pitch sounds than objects feeling less heavy. These judgements track the changes in perceived heaviness induced by the size-weight illusion. The potential involvement of language, natural scene statistics, and Bayesian processes in correspondences, and the effects they induce, is considered.

The Louder, the Longer: Object Length Perception Is Influenced by Loudness, but Not by Pitch

“…Note that size-pitch-correspondences and weight-pitch-correspondences (cf. [23,24]), as well as size-loudness correspondences [13,25] well documented. Our findings show, that when paired with a salient visual stimulus, loudness carries much more impact than does pitch.…”

The number–weight illusion

“…For example, the numbers might influence the perception of the ball's hardness, which in turn might influence the perception of weight 2 . Alternatively, larger numbers might be experienced as "higher" and smaller numbers as "lower" (e.g., Walker, Scallon, & Francis, 2017; also see Walker, Walker, & Francis, 2012, 2015, while lighter objects tend to be higher up in the environment and heavier objects tend to be lower 3 . In combination, these number-height and height-weight associations would lead to a similar pattern as observed in Experiment 1.…”

Effects of pitch of short pure tones on onomatopoeic expressions: A cross-linguistic study of Japanese and Chinese

“…However, in fact, past studies have suggested relationships between sound and shape or meaning, and a relationship between a mono mora or a phoneme and the impression evoked from it has been revealed in multiple languages [e.g., [3][4][5][6][7][8]. On the other hand, there are also many studies dealing with the phenomenon as a cross-modality, cross-sensory, or crossmodal association [e.g., [9][10][11]. In addition, there are studies about the relationships between brain functions and the cross-sensory phenomenon [e.g., [12][13][14].…”