Cross-sensory correspondences and cross talk between dimensions of connotative meaning: Visual angularity is hard, high-pitched, and bright

Abstract

Higher-pitched sounds are judged to be, among other things, sharper, harder, and brighter than lower-pitched sounds. Following Karwoski, Odbert, and Osgood (Journal of General Psychology 26:199-222, 1942), such cross-sensory correspondences are proposed to have a semantic basis, reflecting extensive bidirectional cross-activation among dimensions of connotative meaning. On this basis, the same core set of correspondences should emerge whichever sensory feature is used to probe it. More angular (sharper) shapes should, for example, be higher-pitched and have the same cross-sensory features as higher-pitched sounds. Experiments 1-3 employed a speeded classification task designed to reveal cross-sensory correspondences having a semantic basis. With words as to-beclassified stimuli and with shapes varying in angularity as concurrent incidental stimuli, congruity effects between angularity and each of hardness, pitch, and brightness were confirmed. Correspondences with a semantic basis need not be cross-modality in nature. Experiment 4 confirmed this by reproducing the brightness-angularity congruity effect when contrasting values for both features were encoded nonverbally within the visual modality. The varying nature and origins of cross-sensory correspondences and the basis on which they induce congruity effects in speeded classification are explored.Keywords Multisensory processing . Cross-sensory Correspondences . Connotative meaning . Congruity effects . Speeded classification . Visual angularity Different sensory channels can provide corresponding information (what Marks, 1978, also referred to as analogous information) about an object, as when vision and audition both confirm its connotative brightness, the former by registering its surface brightness, the latter by registering that it makes relatively bright (i.e., high-pitched) sounds (NB: The connotative meaning of any kind of stimulus is what it suggests, implies, or invokes, rather than what it explicitly or directly denotes). The provision of corresponding connotative information through different sensory channels is the focus of the present study.

That Sounds Sweet: Using Cross‐Modal Correspondences to Communicate Gustatory Attributes

“…For instance, angular shapes are reliably matched to higher (rather than lower) auditory pitch (Marks, 1987;Walker, 2012). Congruence Specific to audition and taste, recent cognitive psychology and neuroscience research has demonstrated that people will reliably match specific (psycho-)acoustic and musical parameters with different tastes, flavors, and oral-somatosensory food-related experiences (Crisinel, et al, 2012;Crisinel & Spence, 2010a, 2010b, 2011, 2012a, 2012bMesz, Sigman, & Trevisan, 2012;Mesz, Trevisan, & Sigman, 2011;Simner, Cuskley, & Kirby, 2010).…”

“…According to one recent account, sound symbolism may be just a special case of the more general phenomenon of crossmodal correspondences (see Spence, 2011;Walker & Walker, 2012), which will be discussed in more detail in the next section.…”

“…First, a semantic matching account would predict that auditory and gustatory stimuli are matched based on learned semantic associations, that is, extensive bidirectional cross-activation among dimensions of connotative meaning (Walker, 2012). For example, "sweet" is a descriptor applicable to tastes and, metaphorically in Western culture, also to sounds.…”

Five mechanisms of sound symbolic association

“…The exact connotative dimensions involved also require further elaboration. Much of Walker's work focuses a core set of connotations including: light/heavy, sharp/blunt, quick/slow, bright/dark, and small/large (e.g., P. Walker & Walker, 2012). Others have focused on connotations that comprise the three factors of connotative meaning discovered by Osgood, Suci, and Tannenbaum (1957), namely, evaluation (e.g., good/bad), potency (e.g., strong/ weak), and activity (e.g., active/passive; e.g., Miron, 1961;Tarte, 1982).…”

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“…Noteworthy, other studies have shown that the shape of a plate and food (when 94 it is round as compared to angular) can influence participants' sweetness ratings of the food 95 Here it is worth mentioning that, in spite of their perceptual basis, similarities across the 98 senses also surface in language (e.g., see the quote at the beginning of the Introduction, 99 Marks, 1978Marks, , 1996. With this in mind, we ask whether the potential hedonic-and intensity-100 related explanations/mediations of taste/shape correspondences may extend to taste words 101 and, if so, whether they reflect: a perceptual process; a common connotative meaning 102 (Walker, 2012 Dictionary, 'sharp' applied first to touch, then subsequently to taste (ca. 1000), visual shape 114 (1340), and hearing" (p. 190), indicating that shape-related words have been used to describe 115 tastes for several centuries, and thereby perhaps some kind of implicit relation between shape 116 and taste quality (see also Williams, 1976;Yu, 2003).…”