Article
Intuitive Pitch-to-Digit Associations Do Not Support Verbal Short-Term Memory (en)
* Presenting author
Abstract:
Semantic congruency is one of the main factors supporting multisensory integration. In contrast to spatiotemporal cooccurrence, semantic congruency relies on learned associations, whether they are learned explicitly (names for objects) or by implicit association due to correlated physical features (size-pitch association). Here, participants completed a serial recall task in which visually presented target digits, were presented with tones in the pitch range between C4 and D5. In the first phase of the experiment participants chose a mapping between the digits and tones. The mapping could either be increasing (increasing digit, increasing pitch), decreasing (increasing digit, decreasing pitch), or self-assigned. While most participants chose the increasing mapping, none chose the self-assignment.In the subsequent serial recall task the digits could either be presented 1) congruently (following the chosen mapping), 2) incongruently (not following the mapping), 3) with a randomly chosen constant tone for all digits, or 4) without any tones. The different presentation conditions did not affect serial recall performance, although all participants indicated that choosing a mapping was "intuitive" or "obvious". Although, more musically experienced participants performed generally better, their performance did not depend on the presentation condition.