The Role of Pitch and Tempo in Sound-Temperature Crossmodal Correspondences

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

We explored the putative existence of crossmodal correspondences between sound attributes and beverage temperature. An online pre-study was conducted first, in order to determine whether people would associate the auditory parameters of pitch and tempo with different imagined beverage temperatures. The same melody was manipulated to create a matrix of 25 variants with five different levels of both pitch and tempo. The participants were instructed to imagine consuming hot, room-temperature, or cold water, then to choose the melody that best matched the imagined drinking experience. The results revealed that imagining drinking cold water was associated with a significantly higher pitch than drinking both room-temperature and hot water, and with significantly faster tempo than room-temperature water. Next, the online study was replicated with participants in the lab tasting samples of hot, room-temperature, and cold water while choosing a melody that best matched the actual tasting experience. The results confirmed that, compared to room-temperature and hot water, the experience of cold water was associated with both significantly higher pitch and fast tempo. Possible mechanisms and potential applications of these results are discussed.

Original languageEnglish
JournalMultisensory Research
Volume30
Issue number3-5
Pages (from-to)307-320
Number of pages14
ISSN2213-4794
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2017
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
CS would like to thank the AHRC grant entitled 'Rethinking the senses' (AH/L007053/1) for supporting this research.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Q. Wang and C. Spence.

    Research areas

  • Crossmodal correspondences, drinking, pitch, temperature, tempo

ID: 375019809