Re: Cariani's question: "What is the visual analogue of pitch?"

[Michael Kubovy <kubovy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear List,

Dave van Valkenburg and I have addressed Peter Cariani's question  
("what is the visual analogue of pitch?") at some length in an article,  
Kubovy, M. & Van Valkenburg, D. Auditory and visual objects. Cognition.  
80(1–2):97–126, 2001 Jun, which can be downloaded from:
(  
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~mk9y/mySite/papers/ 
2001.Cognition.v80(1%0A-2).pdf ).

Our answer is that the question cannot be answered without  
distinguishing between different kinds of analogues. Insofar as pitch  
is central to the auditory "what", then the analogue is whatever  
sustains the visual "what", namely either space or spatial frequency  
(we focus on space in the article, but there's little reason to  
privilege either it or spatial frequency -- the analogy is at a level  
where sensory mechanisms are not at issue).

Here's the abstract:
Notions of objecthood have traditionally been cast in visuocentric  
terminology.  As a result, theories of auditory and cross-modal  
perception have focused more on the differences between modalities than  
on the similarities.  In this paper we re-examine the concept of an  
object in a way that overcomes the limitations of the traditional
perspective.  We propose a new, cross-modal conception of objecthood  
which focuses on the similarities between modalities instead of the  
differences.  Further, we propose that the auditory system might  
consist of two parallel streams of processing (the ``what'' and  
``where'' subsystems) in a manner analogous to current conceptions of  
the visual system.  We suggest that the ``what'' subsystems in each  
modality are concerned with objecthood.  Finally, we present evidence  
for---and elaborate on---the hypothesis that the auditory ``where''  
subsystem is in the service of visual-motor ``where'' subsystem.

_____________________________
Professor Michael Kubovy
University of Virginia
Department of Psychology
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