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

Abstract

Sound by itself can be a reliable source of information about an object’s size. For instance, we are able to estimate the size of objects merely on the basis of the sound they make when falling on the floor. Moreover, loudness and pitch are crossmodally linked to size. We investigated if sound has an effect on size estimation even in the presence of visual information, that is if the manipulation of the sound produced by a falling object influences visual length estimation. Participants watched videos of wooden dowels hitting a hard floor and estimated their lengths. Sound was manipulated by (A) increasing (decreasing) overall sound pressure level, (B) swapping sounds among the different dowel lengths, and (C) increasing (decreasing) pitch. Results showed that dowels were perceived to be longer with increased sound pressure level (SPL), but there was no effect of swapped sounds or pitch manipulation. However, in a sound-only-condition, main effects of length and pitch manipulation were found. We conclude that we are able to perceive subtle differences in the acoustic properties of impact sounds and use them to deduce object size when visual cues are eliminated. In contrast, when visual cues are available, only loudness is potent enough to exercise a crossmodal influence on length perception.

Environmental Sound Perception: Effects of Aging and Hearing Loss

“…For example, listener's judgments of the crunchiness of potato chips appear to be affected by the chewing sounds, while the enjoyment of a beverage can be affected by the sound of opening its container (Spence and Wang 2015). Environmental sounds also play a role in guiding human actions by providing information about distance and reachability of unseen moving objects through sound alone (Rosenblum et al 1996;Neuhoff 2004) or through interactions of hearing with other sensory modalities (Ecker and Heller 2005;Castiello et al 2010;Hauck and Hecht 2019;Roudaia et al 2013). The walking patterns of healthy adults and Parkinson's patients are affected by the sounds of footsteps they hear (Turchet et al 2015;Young et al 2014).…”