Music-to-Color Associations of Single-line Piano Melodies in Non-Synesthetes

Prior research has shown that non-synesthetes’ color associations to classical orchestral music are strongly mediated by emotion. The present study examines similar cross-modal music-to-color associations for much better controlled musical stimuli: 64 single-line piano melodies that were generated from four basic melodies by Mozart, whose global musical parameters were manipulated in tempo (slow/fast), note-density (sparse/dense), mode (major/minor) and pitch-height (low/high). Participants first chose the three colors (from 37) that they judged to be most consistent with (and, later, the three that were most inconsistent with) the music they were hearing. They later rated each melody and each color for the strength of its association along four emotional dimensions: happy/sad, agitated/calm, angry/not-angry and strong/weak. The cross-modal choices showed that faster music in the major mode was associated with lighter, more saturated, yellower (warmer) colors than slower music in the minor mode. These results replicate and extend those of Palmer et al. (2013, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 110, 8836–8841) with more precisely controlled musical stimuli. Further results replicated strong evidence for emotional mediation of these cross-modal associations, in that the emotional ratings of the melodies were very highly correlated with the emotional associations of the colors chosen as going best/worst with the melodies (r = 0.92, 0.85, 0.82 and 0.70 for happy/sad, strong/weak, angry/not-angry and agitated/calm, respectively). The results are discussed in terms of common emotional associations forming a cross-modal bridge between highly disparate sensory inputs.

先前的研究表明，非联觉者在古典管弦乐中的色彩联想受到情感的强烈影响。本研究旨在探讨在更加精确控制的音乐刺激下，类似的多模态音乐与色彩之间的联想：64段由莫扎特创作的四首基础旋律派生出的单线条钢琴旋律，其全局音乐参数在节奏（慢/快）、音符密度（稀疏/密集）、调式（大调/小调）和音高（低/高）方面进行了操纵。参与者首先从37种颜色中选择他们认为与所听音乐最一致的（以及随后最不一致的）三种颜色。随后，他们对每个旋律和每种颜色在四个情感维度上的关联强度进行了评估：快乐/悲伤、激动/平静、愤怒/不愤怒以及强烈/微弱。多模态的选择显示，主调模式中的快节奏音乐与更明亮、饱和度更高、更接近黄色的（更温暖的）颜色相关联，而小调模式中的慢节奏音乐则与这些颜色相反。这些结果与Palmer等人（2013年，《美国国家科学院院刊》第110卷，第8836-8841页）的研究结果相一致，并进一步扩展了这些结果，使用了更加精确控制的音乐刺激。进一步的结果重复了关于这些多模态联想情感介质的强烈证据，即旋律的情感评分与所选颜色与旋律最佳/最差匹配的情感联想高度相关（快乐/悲伤、强烈/微弱、愤怒/不愤怒和激动/平静的相关系数分别为0.92、0.85、0.82和0.70）。这些结果从共同情感联想构建起跨越高度差异化的感官输入的多模态桥梁的角度进行了讨论。