Crossmodal priming of contour: from music to luminance

Contour, the “shape” of a melody defined by the direction of pitch changes, is a key feature for melodies' perception and memory. Beyond pitch, contour can also be perceived with variations of other auditory and visual dimensions, such as loudness, spatial position, or luminance. Previous findings have shown that musically trained individuals memorise contour sequences implemented without any pitch variation better than nonmusicians, notably by mentally representing them as melodies (Talamini et al., 2022). In the present study, we tested nonmusicians (N=40) to investigate whether short-term memory for visual contour sequences could be facilitated by priming the sequences with a contour-matched melody. In each trial, participants compared two luminance sequences (S1, S2) and judged whether they were the same or different. Half of the trials were preceded by a pitch sequence that matched the contour of S1. Music and pitch perception skills were also assessed. Results revealed that, on average, the primed luminance sequences were better remembered than those without the prime. Moreover, music and pitch perception skills were moderately correlated with the overall performance in the luminance short-term memory task. The present findings provide new insights into crossmodal contour perception and memory, and open new possibilities for investigating the underlying cognitive mechanisms of contour perception.