DISCRIMINATION DEPENDING ON THE COLOR CATEGORY
Kenta Miyamoto¹*, Yuma Taniyama¹, Kyoko Hine¹, and Shigeki Nakauchi¹
¹ Department, of Computer Science and Engineering Toyohashi University of Technology, Japan.
*Corresponding author: Kenta Miyamoto, miyamoto19@vpac.cs.tut.ac.jp
Keywords: Crossmodal correspondences, Audiovisual integration, Stroop effect
Poster presentation video: https://youtu.be/Lcjpy73llg8
People associate a specific color characteristic with a specific sound characteristic, as in the Japanese expression "Kiiroi seien" (yellow cheer), which describes the color as a sound. Previous studies have reported that people associate yellow with high pitches and blue with low pitches. Such particular color-sound associations are called crossmodal correspondence. It is unclear how the color-sound crossmodal correspondence affects the integration of the audiovisual information which interacts with each other. To clarify the aspect of the crossmodal interaction in the audiovisual integration process, this study aimed to investigate how the congruency of color-sound correspondence enhanced/interfered with discrimination. Three experiments were conducted, in which the Stroop tasks were performed to assess the enhancement and the interference. We focused on the crossmodal correspondence between sounds (things falling/bell ringing) and colors (yellow/blue) (Exp. 1) / words representing colors (yellow/blue) (Exp. 2). Participants were asked to judge either the color/word or the sound simultaneously presented. Those results showed the bidirectional enhancement/interference by the congruency of the crossmodal correspondence in both Exp. 1 and 2, though two experiments differed in whether the color patches or the color words were used as the visual stimuli. These results suggest that the crossmodal Stroop effect is caused by the semantical factor (color categories), not by the perceptual factor (color appearance). Next, we hypothesized that the Stroop effect would occur for any colors within a color category, not just typical colors. In Exp. 3, participants were asked to judge the color category of a presented color patch while listening to a sound. The responses were divided into two groups, the within- and outside the category boundary, based on the color category threshold of each participant. The ANOVA results revealed a significant interaction between crossmodal congruency and category. This indicates that the Stroop effect occurred only within the category boundary, but not outside the category boundary. These results indicate that crossmodal correspondence is used in color discrimination and may occur depending on whether the within or outside the color category boundary.
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