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Low is large: spatial location and pitch interact in voice-based body size estimation
Katarzyna Pisanski1,2,3, Sari G E Isenstein1, Kelyn J Montano1
1Department of Psychology, Neuroscience, & Behaviour, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, Ontario, L8S 4L8, Canada.
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics
|February 24, 2017
Summary
Pitch influences how we perceive size and spatial location. Low-pitched sounds are associated with larger sizes and lower elevations, overriding visual cues in multimodal perception tasks.
Area of Science:
- Auditory perception
- Crossmodal correspondences
- Multimodal integration
Background:
- Multimodal perception integrates information from different senses, but incongruent cues can pose challenges.
- Spatial cues (e.g., elevation) and pitch cues (e.g., low pitch) can both influence size perception.
- Previous research suggests pitch is mapped to size (low pitch = large), but its interaction with spatial cues needs further investigation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the interaction between vertical spatial cues (elevation) and pitch cues in size perception.
- To determine if similar pitch-size mappings extend to horizontal spatial dimensions.
- To examine the influence of self-referential cues (sitting vs. standing) on these crossmodal correspondences.
Main Methods:
- Participants judged human body size based on pitch-manipulated voices presented from different spatial locations (high/low, left/right).
- Experiment 1: Assessed voice-based size judgments with varying pitch and spatial location.
- Experiment 2: Replicated Experiment 1 with participants either sitting or standing to incorporate self-referential elevation cues.
Main Results:
- Low-pitched voices were associated with larger perceived body size and lower spatial locations, overriding elevation cues.
- Rightward spatial locations were consistently associated with larger perceived size, irrespective of voice pitch.
- These crossmodal correspondences were robust to voice and listener sex, but horizontal spatial biases were amplified when participants stood.
Conclusions:
- Pitch has a multidimensional spatial mapping that extends to human voices and influences ecologically relevant tasks like body size estimation.
- Crossmodal pitch correspondences engage both low-level sensory processing and higher-level cognitive functions.
- The findings highlight the complex interplay between auditory cues, spatial perception, and size estimation in multimodal contexts.
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