Abstract
Various reports suggest that the pitch height of musical tones may be represented along a mental space, with lower pitch heights represented on the left or lower sectors and higher pitch heights represented on the right or upper sectors of the mental space. Given that in Western languages the loudness of tones is often addressed spatially, with loud sounds referred to as “high” and quiet sounds referred to as “low,” here we investigated whether loudness might also have a spatial representation. Participants judged whether a tone was louder or quieter than a reference tone, by pressing two keys: one at the top and the other at the bottom of a response box. Participants were faster in a situation where they pressed the key at the top to report louder sounds, and the key at the bottom to report quieter sounds, than vice versa. This result supports the view that loudness, like other types of magnitudes, might be represented spatially.
Highlights
Various reports suggest that the pitch height of musical tones may be represented along a mental space, with lower pitch heights represented on the left or lower sectors and higher pitch heights represented on the right or upper sectors of the mental space
When asked to judge whether a tone was amplitude modulated or not, participants were faster when the pitch of the tone was high and the response was given by pressing a button that was placed at the top of a vertically oriented response box
The aim of the present study was to investigate whether loudness might have a vertical mental spatial representation
Summary
Various reports suggest that the pitch height of musical tones may be represented along a mental space, with lower pitch heights represented on the left or lower sectors and higher pitch heights represented on the right or upper sectors of the mental space. Participants were faster in a situation where they pressed the key at the top to report louder sounds, and the key at the bottom to report quieter sounds, than vice versa This result supports the view that loudness, like other types of magnitudes, might be represented spatially. Pitch height of musical tones might be spatially represented too This effect has been termed the SMARC effect (Spatial–Musical Association of Response Codes; Cho, Bae, & Proctor, 2012; Lidji et al, 2007; Pitteri, Marchetti, Priftis, & Grassi, 2017; Rusconi, Kwan, Giordano, Umilta , & Butterworth, 2006). When asked to judge whether a tone was amplitude modulated or not (i.e., vibrato), participants were faster when the pitch of the tone was high and the response was given by pressing a button that was placed at the top of a vertically oriented response box. Participants were faster when the pitch of the tone was low and the response was given by pressing a button at the bottom of a vertically oriented response box (Pitteri et al, 2017)
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