Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Do you see what I'm singing?
T2 - visuospatial movement biases pitch perception
AU - Connell, Louise
AU - Cai, Zhenguang G.
AU - Holler, Judith
PY - 2013/2
Y1 - 2013/2
N2 - The nature of the connection between musical and spatial processing is controversial. While pitch may be described in spatial terms such as "high" or "low", it is unclear whether pitch and space are associated but separate dimensions or whether they share representational and processing resources. In the present study, we asked participants to judge whether a target vocal note was the same as (or different from) a preceding cue note. Importantly, target trials were presented as video clips where a singer sometimes gestured upward or downward while singing that target note, thus providing an alternative, concurrent source of spatial information. Our results show that pitch discrimination was significantly biased by the spatial movement in gesture, such that downward gestures made notes seem lower in pitch than they really were, and upward gestures made notes seem higher in pitch. These effects were eliminated by spatial memory load but preserved under verbal memory load conditions. Together, our findings suggest that pitch and space have a shared representation such that the mental representation of pitch is audiospatial in nature.
AB - The nature of the connection between musical and spatial processing is controversial. While pitch may be described in spatial terms such as "high" or "low", it is unclear whether pitch and space are associated but separate dimensions or whether they share representational and processing resources. In the present study, we asked participants to judge whether a target vocal note was the same as (or different from) a preceding cue note. Importantly, target trials were presented as video clips where a singer sometimes gestured upward or downward while singing that target note, thus providing an alternative, concurrent source of spatial information. Our results show that pitch discrimination was significantly biased by the spatial movement in gesture, such that downward gestures made notes seem lower in pitch than they really were, and upward gestures made notes seem higher in pitch. These effects were eliminated by spatial memory load but preserved under verbal memory load conditions. Together, our findings suggest that pitch and space have a shared representation such that the mental representation of pitch is audiospatial in nature.
KW - Mental representation
KW - Pitch perception
KW - Music
KW - Space
KW - Spatial representation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84869881191&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.bandc.2012.09.005
DO - 10.1016/j.bandc.2012.09.005
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 23195703
VL - 81
SP - 124
EP - 130
JO - Brain and Cognition
JF - Brain and Cognition
SN - 1090-2147
IS - 1
ER -