Correspondences between visual spatial position and vocal response pitch

Abstract

Previous studies have shown perceptual processing cross-modal correspondences between spatial high/low positions and auditory high/low pitches. Several studies also found that auditory pitch influences spatially defined motor responses, suggesting that perceptual and motoric information regarding spatial and auditory high/low stimuli are shared. However, it remains unclear whether spatial position influences auditorily defined motor responses. We addressed this question by examining vocal responses to high/low pitches. In our experiment, sixteen participants vocalized a meaningless sound (/a/) at high/low pitch in response to spatially high/low stimuli under compatible and incompatible conditions. Results showed that the onset of vocalization was shorter under the compatible condition than the incompatible conditions. Together with previous studies, the current results suggest that information regarding spatial high/low position and auditory high/low pitch are bidirectionally and consistently shared across perceptual and motor systems.