Space oddity: musical syntax is mapped onto visual space

Abstract Increasing evidence has uncovered associations between the cognition of abstract schemas and spatial perception. Here we examine such associations for Western musical syntax, tonality. Spatial metaphors are ubiquitous when describing tonality: stable, closural tones are considered to be spa...

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Autores principales:	Neta B. Maimon, Dominique Lamy, Zohar Eitan
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Nature Portfolio 2021
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/9bf178f3586944b09dc0cf39685c142c
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:9bf178f3586944b09dc0cf39685c142c2021-11-21T12:23:22ZSpace oddity: musical syntax is mapped onto visual space10.1038/s41598-021-01393-12045-2322https://doaj.org/article/9bf178f3586944b09dc0cf39685c142c2021-11-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-01393-1https://doaj.org/toc/2045-2322Abstract Increasing evidence has uncovered associations between the cognition of abstract schemas and spatial perception. Here we examine such associations for Western musical syntax, tonality. Spatial metaphors are ubiquitous when describing tonality: stable, closural tones are considered to be spatially central and, as gravitational foci, spatially lower. We investigated whether listeners, musicians and nonmusicians, indeed associate tonal relationships with visuospatial dimensions, including spatial height, centrality, laterality, and size, implicitly or explicitly, and whether such mappings are consistent with established metaphors. In the explicit paradigm, participants heard a tonality-establishing prime followed by a probe tone and coupled each probe with a subjectively appropriate location (Exp.1) or size (Exp.4). The implicit paradigm used a version of the Implicit Association Test to examine associations of tonal stability with vertical position (Exp.2), lateral position (Exp3) and size (Exp.5). Tonal stability was indeed associated with perceived physical space: the spatial distances between the locations associated with different scale-degrees significantly correlated with the tonal stability differences between these scale-degrees. However, inconsistently with musical discourse, stable tones were associated with leftward (instead of central) and higher (instead of lower) spatial positions. We speculate that these mappings are influenced by emotion, embodying the “good is up” metaphor, and by the spatial structure of music keyboards. Taken together, the results demonstrate a new type of cross-modal correspondence and a hitherto under-researched connotative function of musical structure. Importantly, the results suggest that the spatial mappings of an abstract domain may be independent of the spatial metaphors used to describe that domain.Neta B. MaimonDominique LamyZohar EitanNature PortfolioarticleMedicineRScienceQENScientific Reports, Vol 11, Iss 1, Pp 1-17 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Neta B. Maimon Dominique Lamy Zohar Eitan Space oddity: musical syntax is mapped onto visual space
description	Abstract Increasing evidence has uncovered associations between the cognition of abstract schemas and spatial perception. Here we examine such associations for Western musical syntax, tonality. Spatial metaphors are ubiquitous when describing tonality: stable, closural tones are considered to be spatially central and, as gravitational foci, spatially lower. We investigated whether listeners, musicians and nonmusicians, indeed associate tonal relationships with visuospatial dimensions, including spatial height, centrality, laterality, and size, implicitly or explicitly, and whether such mappings are consistent with established metaphors. In the explicit paradigm, participants heard a tonality-establishing prime followed by a probe tone and coupled each probe with a subjectively appropriate location (Exp.1) or size (Exp.4). The implicit paradigm used a version of the Implicit Association Test to examine associations of tonal stability with vertical position (Exp.2), lateral position (Exp3) and size (Exp.5). Tonal stability was indeed associated with perceived physical space: the spatial distances between the locations associated with different scale-degrees significantly correlated with the tonal stability differences between these scale-degrees. However, inconsistently with musical discourse, stable tones were associated with leftward (instead of central) and higher (instead of lower) spatial positions. We speculate that these mappings are influenced by emotion, embodying the “good is up” metaphor, and by the spatial structure of music keyboards. Taken together, the results demonstrate a new type of cross-modal correspondence and a hitherto under-researched connotative function of musical structure. Importantly, the results suggest that the spatial mappings of an abstract domain may be independent of the spatial metaphors used to describe that domain.
format	article
author	Neta B. Maimon Dominique Lamy Zohar Eitan
author_facet	Neta B. Maimon Dominique Lamy Zohar Eitan
author_sort	Neta B. Maimon
title	Space oddity: musical syntax is mapped onto visual space
title_short	Space oddity: musical syntax is mapped onto visual space
title_full	Space oddity: musical syntax is mapped onto visual space
title_fullStr	Space oddity: musical syntax is mapped onto visual space
title_full_unstemmed	Space oddity: musical syntax is mapped onto visual space
title_sort	space oddity: musical syntax is mapped onto visual space
publisher	Nature Portfolio
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/9bf178f3586944b09dc0cf39685c142c
work_keys_str_mv	AT netabmaimon spaceodditymusicalsyntaxismappedontovisualspace AT dominiquelamy spaceodditymusicalsyntaxismappedontovisualspace AT zohareitan spaceodditymusicalsyntaxismappedontovisualspace
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Space oddity: musical syntax is mapped onto visual space

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