Music Flashcards
Dolscheid et al 2020
Examined matching of tones to different spatial stimuli
Sapir 1929
- asked participants to judge whether a small or large table were ‘mil’ or ‘mal’
- tested this across language
‘i’ sound in mil more likely to be associated with small things
‘a’ sound associated with larger things
Sound symbolism
sound symbolism also called iconicity
aspects of form related to aspects of meaning
goes beyond onomatopeia since the referent does not need to be a sound
Kohler 1929 - Takete or Baluba
- asked participants to judge whether curvy or spiky shapes were ‘takete’ or ‘baluba’
- many studies have replicated that ‘takete’ is spiky whilst ‘baluba’ is curvy in many different languages
- the origin of this mechanism of this effect is debated
- could be acoustic/articulate (shape of the mouth) properties or orthography and writing systems
Blasi et al 2016
- investigated thousands of languages through the use of word lists
- found some sounds were more likely to be paired with certain meanings that would be expected by chance
-for example n likely to appear is nose cross linguisticaly due to more than chance
Imai et al 2008
- some researchers think sound symbolism allows infants to bootstrap into language learning
- potential evolutionary/developmental advantage/function to acquiring language
Bidel man et al 2013 - Relativity and cognition
Involved English-speaking musicians, English-speaking non-musicians, and Cantonese-speaking non-musicians
Cantonese is a tonal language with six tones, while English is atonal
Musicians and tone language speakers share enhanced perceptual and cognitive abilities for musical pitch, supporting bidirectionality between music and language domains
Music and language are intimately coupled, and training in one domain can influence processing in the other
Bidel man et al 2013 - Relativity and cognition (FINDINGS)
Musicians demonstrated superior performance on all auditory measures, while Cantonese speakers showed comparable enhancements relative to English-speaking non-musicians
Both groups showed superior working memory capacity compared to non-musician controls, suggesting enhanced general cognitive abilities
Differences in tonality between languages impact cognitive processes of musical perception, supporting the theory of linguistic relativity
Implications for developing training and rehabilitation programs for individuals with speech difficulties due to illness or brain trauma.
Ngo et al 2016 - Interaction between music and tone language
Study on interaction between music and tone language in pitch processing
Ppts judged direction/magnitude of pitch changes in a relative pitch task
Cochran-Weiss-Shanteau (CWS) index used to assess performance based on discrimination and consistency in relative pitch judgements
Musicians outperformed non-musicians on both relative pitch tasks (CWS and MBEA)
Tonal language speakers outperformed non-tonal language speakers only on MBEA
Musicians had better discrimination and consistency scores in CWS
Parkinson et al 2012 - Kreung people and association of spatial height with auditory pitch
Method: Tested whether Kreung people associate spatial height with auditory pitch despite not having the same words for them
Task: Participants indicated whether a tone was ascending or descending in pitch while viewing an animated red ball rise or fall on a computer
Findings: Error rate showed Kreung to associate high-low space with high-low pitch, suggesting a universal property as a congruency effect was shown
Criticism: Insufficient information on how language facts were established, only one language tested so cannot truly test whether language influences thought. The study would need to be replicated with a variety of other languages to make more generalized conclusions.
Pratt 1930
Created a numbered scale from floor to ceiling
Participants sat facing a wall and listened to tones of varying frequencies
Participants had to point to the location where the sound emerged
Higher tones were located higher in space than low tones > even though origin of sound was the same
Eitan and Timmers 2010 - Forced Choice-Association task
took pitch metaphors (from across cultures) - gave to Hebrew speakers - given a forced choice- association task to match metaphors with pitch - found that Hebrew speakers can match all associations to high/low pitch better than chance - conclude associations are available to everyone even if they are not apart of language - suggests natural basis
Majid et al 2018 - Crosslinguistic Sound Associations
- asked speakers from 20 diverse languages to describe sounds that varied in pitch, loudness and tempo
- found that people overwhelmingly use metaphor to describe sounds
- also found that the vertical metaphor (english high / low) was not most commonly used > instead size metaphors were a lot more common
Parise et al 2014 - German Town - High Low metaphor based off real world statistics
wired people with directional microphones behind ears - walked around German town for a week - analysed acoustic pitch of microphones - found that high pitched sounds come from higher in space than low pitch sounds - argues convolutions in ear have been optimally designed to pick up variation in pitch in environment - high low metaphor based of environment based auditory statistics in real world
