Summation of visual attributes in auditory‐visual crossmodal

Crossmodal correspondences are a feature of human perception in which two or
more sensory dimensions are linked together; for example, high‐pitched noises may be
more readily linked with small objects than large objects. However, no study yet has
systematically examined the interaction between different visual‐auditory crossmodal
correspondences. We investigated how the visual dimensions of luminance, saturation, size
and vertical position can influence decisions when matching particular visual stimuli with
high‐pitched or low‐pitched auditory stimuli. For multi‐dimensional stimuli, we found a
general pattern of summation of individual crossmodal correspondences, with some
exceptions that may be explained by Garner interference. These findings have applications
for the design of sensory substitution systems, which convert information from one sensory
modality to another.