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Reading sentences describing high- or low-pitched auditory events: only pianists show evidence for a horizontal space-pitch association

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Abstract

This study explored differences between pianists and non-musicians during reading of sentences describing high- or low-pitched auditory events. Based on the embodied model of language comprehension, it was hypothesized that the experience of playing the piano encourages a corresponding association between high-pitched sounds and the right and low-pitched sounds and the left. This pitch-space association is assumed to become elicited during understanding of sentences describing either a high- or low-pitched auditory event. In this study, pianists and non-musicians were tested based on the hypothesis that only pianists show a compatibility effect between implied pitch height and horizontal space, because only pianists have the corresponding experience with the piano keyboard. Participants read pitch-related sentences (e.g., the bear growls deeply, the soprano singer sings an aria) and judged whether the sentence was sensible or not by pressing either a left or right response key. The results indicated that only the pianists showed the predicted compatibility effect between implied pitch height and response location. Based on the results, it can be inferred that the experience of playing the piano led to an association between horizontal space and pitch height in pianists, while no such spatial association was elicited in non-musicians.

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Notes

  1. The compatibility effect was not affected by the switch of response mapping (‘sensible right’ vs. ‘sensible left’) nor by the repetition of blocks 1 and 2.

  2. Importantly, data interpretation was not affected by this exclusion. The analyses with and without the problematic item showed qualitatively similar results.

  3. The group of non-musicians is most likely a less homogeneous group than the group of pianists, and might therefore have higher error variability. To account for this issue, we log-transformed the data (see e.g., Keppel & Wickens, 2004; Winter, 2013) and ran an additional ANOVA (including the same factors) with logRTs. The analyses showed qualitatively similar results to the analyses with untransformed RTs (Interaction between group and compatibility: F 1 (1,78) = 6.11, p = 0.01; F 2 (1,117) = 3.5, p = 0.06, Post-hoc tests for pianists: F 1 (1,39) = 7.9, p = 0.008; F 2 (1,117) = 5.9, p = 0.02; Post-hoc tests for non-musicians: F S < 1).

  4. Additionally, we performed a mixed effect modeling analysis using R and lme4 (Bates, Maechler, Bolker, & Walker, 2014). As fixed effects we entered compatibility and group into the model. As random effects we had random intercepts for subjects and items as well as by-subject random slopes for the effect of compatibility and by-item random slopes for the effect of compatibility and group. In a first step, we compared this model M0 to a model M1, which additionally included the effect of interest, i.e., the interaction between compatibility and group. The results of the likelihood ratio tests confirmed the findings from the ANOVAs: Model M1 explained the data significantly better than model M0 [χ 2(1) = 3.9, p < 0.05]. We again ran separate mixed effect modeling analyses for the group of pianists and non-musicians. For the group of pianists, the model containing the compatibility effect explained the data significantly better [χ 2(5) = 15.16, p = 0.01], which was not the case for the group of non-musicians [χ 2(5) = 6.31, p = 0.28].

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Acknowledgments

We thank the editor and reviewers for helpful comments on previous versions of this manuscript. We also thank Florian Wickelmaier for statistical advice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Science, Department of Psychology, University of Tübingen, Schleichstr. 4, 72076, Tübingen, Germany

    Sibylla Wolter, Carolin Dudschig & Barbara Kaup

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  1. Sibylla Wolter
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  2. Carolin Dudschig
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  3. Barbara Kaup
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Correspondence to Sibylla Wolter.

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Ethical approval

The experimental testing was in agreement with the guidelines for good scientific practice at the University of Tübingen (Germany). Participants’ anonymity was always preserved; at no point could the recorded data be associated with a participant’s name. The manuscript does not contain clinical studies or patient data. All participants provided written informed consent.

Additional information

This work was supported by a research grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG) to Barbara Kaup and Hartmut Leuthold (SFB 833, project B4).

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Wolter, S., Dudschig, C. & Kaup, B. Reading sentences describing high- or low-pitched auditory events: only pianists show evidence for a horizontal space-pitch association. Psychological Research 81, 1213–1223 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-016-0812-z

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