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Newton's suggested analogy between the seven musical notes and the seven spectral hues; The musical divisions of the prism, as proposed by Newton (1704). The seven colours: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, filled the seven intervals between the eight notes, starting from the highest note on the right. Deep violet, on the left, is the most refracted light, and red on the right is the least refracted.
Source publication
There has long been interest in the nature of the relationship(s) between hue and pitch or, in other words, between colour and musical/pure tones, stretching back at least as far as Newton, Goethe, Helmholtz, and beyond. In this narrative historical review, we take a closer look at the motivations that have lain behind the various assertions that h...
Context in source publication
Citations
... Indeed, behavioral evidence implicates instrument timbre in ratings of valence, tension arousal, and energy arousal, with increases on these scales corresponding to changes in acoustical descriptors such as fundamental frequency and spectral centroid (e.g., McAdams et al., 2017;Eerola et al., 2012;Korsmit et al., 2023; see also Korsmit et al., 2024). Spence and Di Stefano (2022) argue for an emotional mediation account of color-sound correspondences, positing that ultimately, emotion explains these correspondences, "no matter whether the stimuli are simple or complex" (p. 30). ...
Crossmodal correspondences, or widely shared tendencies for mapping experiences across sensory domains, are revealed in common descriptors of musical timbre such as bright, dark, and warm. Two experiments are reported in which participants listened to recordings of musical instruments playing major scales, selected colors to match the timbres, and rated the timbres on crossmodal semantic scales. Experiment A used three different keyboard instruments, each played in three pitch registers. Stimuli in Experiment B, representing six different orchestral instruments, were similar to those in Experiment A but were controlled for pitch register. Overall, results were consistent with hypothesized concordances between ratings on crossmodal timbre descriptors and participants’ color associations. Semantic ratings predicted the lightness and saturation of colors matched to instrument timbres; effects were larger when both pitch register and instrument type varied (Experiment A) but were still evident when pitch register was held constant (Experiment B). We also observed a weak relationship between participant ratings of musical stimuli on the terms warm and cool and the warmth-coolness of selected colors in Experiment B only. Results were generally consistent with the hypothesis that instrument type and pitch register are related to color choice, though we speculate that these associations may only be relevant for certain instruments. Overall, the results have implications for our understanding the relationship between music and color, suggesting that while timbre/color matching behavior is in many ways diverse, observable trends in strategy can in part be linked to crossmodal timbre semantics.
... Music can be played with various instruments and human voices (vocals). Colour is a music can be seen as just an extreme manifestation of the concept of musical analogy in the visual arts [1]. The existence of music has grown rapidly, currently music is not only used as a medium of entertainment, but music has also been developed to achieve certain goals by a person, group, or organization. ...
Music is the art of sound arranged in such a way as to produce beautiful rhythms, melodies and harmonies. Music itself has been widely used as background sound in various fields, one of which is the retail business. This research aims to see the influence of the type of music tempo on consumer purchasing behavior where there are two types of tempos used, fast music tempo and slow music tempo. The method used to see the effect of music tempo on consumer purchasing behavior is the multiple linear regression statistical test. For fast music tempo types there will be 5 questions, 5 questions for slow music tempo types, and 3 questions for consumer purchasing behavior. The population used in this research includes consumers from five grocery stores located in the Yogyakarta Province, Indonesia, who have carried out shopping activities at these stores in May 2023, with a sample size of 32 respondents. The analysis technique used is descriptive analysis and multiple linear regression analysis. The results of this regression analysis show that there is a positive influence of slow music tempo on consumer purchasing behavior, while fast tempo music has negative influence on consumer purchasing behavior.
... Gorn et al. (2004), moreover, showed how high degrees of colour saturation generate excitement and more likability with reference to advertisements. Other fields of research regard colours and taste correspondences and the cross-modal interactions between colours and senses, with recent studies Spence and Di Stefano, 2022;Spence and Levitan, 2021;Ketron and Spears, 2020;Motoki et al., 2019) as well as colours in retail environments (Martinez et al., 2021;Spence et al., 2014;Bellizzi and Hite, 1992). Motoki et al. (2019) investigated how consumers' visual attention can be influenced by the interaction between thermal sensations and colours, finding that warmth (when perceived as comfortable) triggered preferences for light-coloured products. ...
Purpose
This research is aimed at exploring how colours impact the taste expectations of beverages, considering three different countries: Italy, Poland and Morocco. Specifically, the purpose is to analyse how the sensory interaction can affect young consumers and if the cultural aspect affects them in order to draw consumer behaviour implications.
Design/methodology/approach
This is cross-cultural research, structured into two studies. Researchers have administered two questionnaires for each study. Both the questionnaires included 12 questions (three colours – that were red, yellow and orange – × four flavours – that were sweetness, sourness, bitterness and saltiness): participants were asked to express an evaluation on a scale of 1–10 regarding the association between a certain colour of a hypothetical drink and a certain taste. About 150 subjects were involved: 50 Italians, 50 Poles and 50 Moroccans.
Findings
Results highlighted differences between these three national groups. In particular, yellow generated more bitter/salty expectation by Italians (vs Poles) while Poles perceived the red beverage as sweeter and the orange one sourer than Italians. Moreover, yellow and orange beverages inspired sour expectations in Moroccans, compared to Italians.
Originality/value
The comparison between Italy, Poland and Morocco is the most original aspect of this study. Cross-cultural studies are spread in cross-modal research, but this combination is new in literature. In addition, the focus on young consumers and on online environments are further elements of originality.
... are also examples of crossmodal correspondence where the feature is complex, or high-level. Multiple studies have observed associations between musical genres and colours where faster music was associated with lighter, more saturated colours, and slower music was associated with darker, desaturated colours, for instance (Barbiere et al., 2007;Palmer et al., 2013;Spence & Di Stefano, 2022;Wells, 1980). There has been much work into the origins of these associations, which has coalesced into four main ideas. ...
Crossmodal correspondences are consistent associations between sensory features from different modalities, with some theories suggesting they may either reflect environmental correlations or stem from innate neural structures. This study investigates this question by examining whether retinotopic or representational features of stimuli induce crossmodal congruency effects. Participants completed an auditory pitch discrimination task paired with visual stimuli varying in their sensory (retinotopic) or representational (scene integrated) nature, for both the elevation/pitch and size/pitch correspondences. Results show that only representational visual stimuli produced crossmodal congruency effects on pitch discrimination. These results support an environmental statistics hypothesis, suggesting crossmodal correspondences rely on real-world features rather than on sensory representations.
... Kajian berkenaan kesan warna terhadap emosi telah bermula sejak zaman Mesir kuno sehingga ianya dikembangkan secara saintifik oleh Newton, Goethe, Helmholtz dan lain-lain (Spence & Di Stefano, 2022). Sesuai dengan perkembangan kesan identiti korporat untuk membina budaya organisasi, kesan warna juga membawa makna dalam komunikasi yang tidak terucap yang boleh mempengaruhi identiti dan imej sesebuah organisasi (Jonauskaite et al., 2020). ...
Kajian ini mengkaji kaitan di antara Teori Semiotik dan Teori Persuasi/Pujukan Cialdini dalam membina budayaorganisasi dalam konteks identiti korporat. Teori Semiotik adalah teori yang menerangkan penggunaan tanda dan simbol,manakala Teori Persuasi/Pujukan Cialdini pula memfokuskan pada prinsip-prinsip yang mempengaruhi keputusanindividu. Melalui gabungan kedua-dua teori ini akan membentuk persepsi dan tingkah laku terhadap organisasi. Melaluianalisis tematik kualitatif, kajian ini merungkai bagaimana elemen-elemen semiotik seperti logo, slogan, dan warnakorporat digunakan bersama dengan prinsip-prinsip persuasi/pujukan seperti pengaruh sosial, muafakat, kegemaran danketerbatasan untuk memperkukuhkan identiti korporat dalam membina budaya organisasi. Kajian ini menggunakanpendekatan analisis dokumen dengan mengumpulkan data dari pelbagai sumber akademik. Hasil penyelidikan mendapatiintegrasi di antara kedua-dua teori ini membantu pengamal sumber manusia dalam menguruskan sumber manusia kepadaaktiviti membina budaya organisasi melalui pembangunan kepercayaan sehingga mewujudkan budaya organisasi yangideal serta dapat memberikan wawasan baru kepada Jabatan Sumber Manusia dalam merancang strategi membina identitikorporat yang lebih berkesan. Dengan memahami hubungan antara Teori Semiotik dan Teori Persuasi/Pujukan Cialdini,organisasi dapat mengembangkan budaya organisasi melalui identiti korporat yang tidak hanya menarik secara visualtetapi juga meyakinkan dan memotivasi para pekerja untuk bertindak sesuai dengan tujuan korporat. Hasil kajian ini diharapkan dapat memberikan sumbangan yang signifikan kepada bidang ilmu pengurusan sumber manusia.
... As Pesic (2013) puts it: "We can transpose a Beethoven sonata up a half step and still recognize the work as in some sense still the same, yet we cannot likewise "transpose" all the colors of a Rembrandt (say by shifting all reds to orange, orange to yellow, and so forth): Though the basic line and surface contours of the painting remain unchanged, its color harmony cannot be "transposed" and remain recognizably identical. Helmholtz extends the special quality of spatial resemblance that can be seen in related shapes (such as the similar profiles of father and daughter) to the characteristic melodic contour of a certain piece of music, but not to colors" (Pesic, 2013, p. 279; see Spence & Di Stefano, 2022 on crossmodal matchings and sensory translation between colours and sounds). ...
Music has been primarily conceived as a temporal art. However, over the last two centuries or so, researchers across different disciplines including musicology, psychology, and philosophy, have been intrigued by the spatial nature of music and sounds, using spatial concepts to define music. This paper aims to demonstrate that an understanding of music perception from a temporal perspective inherently implies a certain spatial dimension. To do this, first, I briefly examine some key arguments that lead to conceiving sound perception in temporal terms. At the same time, I highlight some of the limitations of a purely temporal account of sound perception which necessitate the incorporation of spatial considerations into the conceptualization of sound perception. Consequently, I move on to consider prominent spatial accounts of musical sounds that have been elaborated by psychologists, musicologists, and music composers. In conclusion, I discuss some of the challenges arising from the analogy between music and space, whether conceived in perceptual or cognitive terms.
... Multiple studies have uncovered crossmodal correspondences between different dimensions of sound and color (see Spence & Di Stefano, 2022, for a review). When it comes to pitch, a couple of studies have found associations between pitch and color hue and brightness. ...
... More recently, Sun et al. (2018) used an explicit test and an implicit association test (IAT) and found that people tend to associate high-pitch sounds (523 Hz) with red hues and low-pitch sounds (130 Hz) with blue hues. Despite the findings of these two studies, it is important to note that the results of other studies investigating correspondences between pitch and color are not consistent, questioning the existence of these associations, at least when luminance is controlled for (Spence & Di Stefano, 2022). Another dimension studied in relation to sound-color correspondences relates to timbre (Adeli, Rouat, & Molotchnikoff, 2014;Reuter et al., 2018). ...
The interest in crossmodal correspondences, including those involving sounds and involving tastes, has experienced rapid growth in recent years. However, the mechanisms underlying these correspondences are not well understood. In the present study (N = 302), we used an associative learning paradigm, based on previous literature using simple sounds with no consensual taste associations (i.e., square and triangle wave sounds at 200 Hz) and taste words (i.e., sweet and bitter), to test the influence of two potential mechanisms in establishing sound–taste correspondences and investigate whether either learning mechanism could give rise to new and long-lasting associations. Specifically, we examined an emotional mediation account (i.e., using sad and happy emoji facial expressions) and a transitive path (i.e., sound-taste correspondence being mediated by color, using red and black colored squares). The results revealed that the associative learning paradigm mapping the triangle wave tone with a happy emoji facial expression induced a novel crossmodal correspondence between this sound and the word sweet. Importantly, we found that this novel association was still present two months after the experimental learning paradigm. None of the other mappings, emotional or transitive, gave rise to any significant associations between sound and taste. These findings provide evidence that new crossmodal correspondences between sounds and tastes can be created by leveraging the affective connection between both dimensions, helping elucidate the mechanisms underlying these associations. Moreover, these findings reveal that these associations can last for several weeks after the experimental session through which they were induced.
... It is presumably more useful to have an absolute mapping between sensory inputs rather than one that is relative, and thus dependent on the context (i.e., and any other stimuli that may be presented at around the same time). Relevant here, though, the vast majority of pitch-based crossmodal correspondences have been found to be relative (see Spence, 2019;Spence & Di Stefano, 2022b). ...
The term ‘amodal’ is a key topic in several different research fields across experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience, including in the areas of developmental and perception science. However, despite being regularly used in the literature, the term means something different to the researchers working in the different contexts. Many developmental scientists conceive of the term as referring to those perceptual qualities, such as, for example, the size and shape of an object, that can be picked up by multiple senses (e.g., vision and touch potentially providing information relevant to the same physical stimulus/property). However, the amodal label is also widely used in the case of those qualities that are not directly sensory, such as, for example, numerosity, rhythm, synchrony, etc. Cognitive neuroscientists, by contrast, tend to use the term amodal to refer to those central cognitive processes and brain areas that do not appear to be preferentially responsive to a particular sensory modality or to those symbolic or formal representations that essentially lack any modality and that are assumed to play a role in the higher processing of sensory information. Finally, perception scientists sometimes refer to the phenomenon of ‘amodal completion’, referring to the spontaneous completion of perceptual information that is missing when occluded objects are presented to observers. In this paper, we review the various different ways in which the term ‘amodal’ has been used in the literature and the evidence supporting the various uses of the term. Morever, we highlight some of the various properties that have been suggested to be ‘amodal’ over the years. Then, we try to address some of the questions that arise from the reviewed evidence, such as: Do different uses of the ‘term’ refer to different domains, for example, sensory information, perceptual processes, or perceptual representations? Are there any commonalities among the different uses of the term? To what extent is research on cross-modal associations (or correspondences) related to, or can shed light on, amodality? And how is the notion of amodal related to multisensory integration? Based on the reviewed evidence, it is argued that there is, as yet, no convincing empirical evidence to support the claim that amodal sensory qualities exist. We thus suggest that use of the term amodal would be more meaningful with respect to abstract cognition rather than necessarily sensory perception, the latter being more adequately explained/understood in terms of highly redundant cross-modal correspondences.
... Earlier work used 'structural correspondences' to refer to these similarities (Spence, 2011), but 'physiological correspondences' may be more appropriate. The term 'structural correspondences' was used based on such putative neural similarities (see Di Stefano and Spence, 2023;Spence, 2011;Spence and Di Stefano, 2022). Statistically mediated correspondences may result from internalizing the statistical regularities in the environment (e.g., pitch and spatial elevation of sound sources; see Parise et al., 2014). ...
... When researchers study correspondences, they describe and analyse a number of different potentially corresponding attributes, whose characteristics we summarize in Table 4. We acknowledge the other fine-grained kinds of dimensions (e.g., Polar, Circular; see Spence and Di Stefano, 2022), but our table provides only a descriptive account of the major different types. ...
The past two decades have seen an explosion of research on crossmodal correspondences. Broadly speaking, this term has been used to encompass associations between and among features, dimensions, or attributes across the senses. There has been an increasing interest in this topic amongst researchers from multiple fields (psychology, neuroscience, music, art, environmental design, etc.) and, importantly, an increasing breadth of the topic’s scope. Here, this narrative review aims to reflect on what crossmodal correspondences are, where they come from, and what underlies them. We suggest that crossmodal correspondences are usefully conceived as relative associations between different actual or imagined sensory stimuli, many of these correspondences being shared by most people. A taxonomy of correspondences with four major kinds of associations (physiological, semantic, statistical, and affective) characterizes crossmodal correspondences. Sensory dimensions (quantity/quality) and sensory features (lower perceptual/higher cognitive) correspond in crossmodal correspondences. Crossmodal correspondences may be understood (or measured) from two complementary perspectives: the phenomenal view (perceptual experiences of subjective matching) and the behavioural response view (observable patterns of behavioural response to multiple sensory stimuli). Importantly, we reflect on remaining questions and standing issues that need to be addressed in order to develop an explanatory framework for crossmodal correspondences. Future research needs (a) to understand better when (and why) phenomenal and behavioural measures are coincidental and when they are not, and, ideally, (b) to determine whether different kinds of crossmodal correspondence (quantity/quality, lower perceptual/higher cognitive) rely on the same or different mechanisms.
... Spence and Levitan (2021) recently outlined several potential mechanisms that might lie behind the aforementioned correspondences. They describe four possibilities: the first suggests that colour-taste correspondences may be based on the crossmodal similarity of the component unisensory stimuli (though see Di Stefano & Spence, 2023;Spence & Di Stefano, 2022). The second mechanism indicates that people might be sensitive to the statistical regularities of the environment and, through a process of associative learning, come to internalize those mappings that occur between tastes and colours in our environments (e.g., Maga, 1974;cf. ...
A multitude of crossmodal correspondences have now been documented between taste (gustation) and visual features (such as hue). In the present study, new analytical methods are used to investigate taste-colour correspondences in a more fine-grained manner while also investigating potential underlying mechanisms. In Experiment 1, image processing analysis is used to evaluate whether searching online for visual images associated with specific taste words (e.g., bitter, sweet) generates outcomes with colour proportions similar to those that have been documented in the literature on taste-colour correspondences. Colour-taste matching tasks incorporating a much wider colour space than tested in previous studies, were assessed in Experiments 2 and 3. Experiments 3 and 4 assessed the extent to which the statistical regularities of the environment, as captured by food object categories, might help to explain the aforementioned correspondences and to what extent the correspondences are present in online content associated to specific tastes, respectively. Experiment 5 evaluated the role of statistical regularities in underpinning colour-taste correspondences related to the stage of ripening of fruit. Overall, the findings revealed consistent associations between specific colours and tastes, in a more nuanced manner than demonstrated in previous studies, while showing that both food object categories and the stage of fruit ripening significantly influenced colour and taste perceptions. This, in turn, suggests that people might base these correspondences on both the foods present in their environments, as well as the natural changes that they undergo as they ripe. The results are discussed in light of the different accounts suggested to explain colour-taste correspondences.