September 2019
Volume 19, Issue 10
Open Access
Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting Abstract  |   September 2019
Visual-auditory crossmodal priming affects visual texture recognition
Author Affiliations & Notes
  • Kohta Wakamatsu
    Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Toyohashi University of Technology
  • Michael J. Proulx
    Department of Psychology, University of Bath
  • Shigeki Nakauchi
    Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Toyohashi University of Technology
Journal of Vision September 2019, Vol.19, 21. doi:https://doi.org/10.1167/19.10.21
  • Views
  • Share
  • Tools
    • Alerts
      ×
      This feature is available to authenticated users only.
      Sign In or Create an Account ×
    • Get Citation

      Kohta Wakamatsu, Michael J. Proulx, Shigeki Nakauchi; Visual-auditory crossmodal priming affects visual texture recognition. Journal of Vision 2019;19(10):21. https://doi.org/10.1167/19.10.21.

      Download citation file:


      © ARVO (1962-2015); The Authors (2016-present)

      ×
  • Supplements
Abstract

We associate certain sounds with psychological concepts such as size and sharpness. This phenomenon is called sound symbolism. Some sound-symbolic words have universality regardless of different linguistic backgrounds, as shown in the Bouba-Kiki Effect (Ramachandran & Hubbard, 2001). Prior research has found crossmodal correspondences between sound and texture in Japanese (Hamano, 1998; Watanabe et al., 2011). However, these studies were based on subjective impressions. Here we investigated whether the texture-sound symbolic effect can be seen in objective indices such as response time, using a crossmodal priming paradigm. Moreover, we compared two groups who have a different first language (Japanese and English) to investigate whether the effect is universal between different languages. Participants were instructed to classify an image on a display as glossy vs. matte, hard vs. soft, or rough vs. smooth in three different blocks for each texture. They were also instructed to do the task as fast and accurate as possible, and to ignore the sound. We used images from our database which have been evaluated independently to have certain textures (glossiness, hardness, and roughness) and synthesized the sound of words that were used to express its texture impression in Japanese. Images and sounds were randomly paired and presented. Thus, each pair of the image and sound is one of the following: congruent (e.g., glossy image and glossy sound), incongruent (e.g., glossy image and matte sound), or neutral (e.g., glossy image and beep sound). The participant’s response time in incongruent conditions was slowed compared to congruent conditions because of the crossmodal priming effect in both Japanese and English speakers. The effect agrees with the previous report (Wakamatsu et al., VSS 2017) in terms of a weaker effect on both non-Japanese speakers, and on glossiness. This result provides evidence for the universality of texture-sound symbolism between different linguistic backgrounds.

Acknowledgement: This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP15H05922 to SN, and a Bath International Research Funding Scheme award to MJP. 
×
×

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

Sign in or purchase a subscription to access this content. ×

You must be signed into an individual account to use this feature.

×