Prelinguistic Infants Are Sensitive to Space-Pitch Associations Found Across Cultures. (June 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Dolscheid, Sarah; Hunnius, Sabine; Casasanto, Daniel; Majid, Asifa
• Is Part Of: Psychological science. Volume 25:Number 6(2014:Jun.)
• Page Start: 1256
• Page End: 1261
• Publication Date: 2014-06
• Subjects: cross-modal associations -- metaphor -- musical pitch -- space -- infant perception; Psychology -- Periodicals; 150.5
• DOI: 10.1177/0956797614528521
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0956-7976

Abstract

People often talk about musical pitch using spatial metaphors. In English, for instance, pitches can be "high" or "low" (i.e., height-pitch association), whereas in other languages, pitches are described as "thin" or "thick" (i.e., thickness-pitch association). According to results from psychophysical studies, metaphors in language can shape people's nonlinguistic space-pitch representations. But does language establish mappings between space and pitch in the first place, or does it only modify preexisting associations? To find out, we tested 4-month-old Dutch infants' sensitivity to height-pitch and thickness-pitch mappings using a preferential-looking paradigm. The infants looked significantly longer at cross-modally congruent stimuli for both space-pitch mappings, which indicates that infants are sensitive to these associations before language acquisition. The early presence of space-pitch mappings means that these associations do not originate from language. Instead, language builds on preexisting mappings, changing them gradually via competitive associative learning. Space-pitch mappings that are language-specific in adults develop from mappings that may be universal in infants.