Exploring Interactions between Visual and Auditory Complex Stimuli through Crossmodal Associations and Pupil Responses
Individuals naturally establish systematic associations between characteristics of different sensory stimuli, what is known as crossmodal correspondences. These associations manifest across various sensory combinations, but the connections between complex visual and auditory stimuli and their impact on pupil responses remain underexplored in scientific literature. The present study aims to investigate systematic crossmodal correspondences between figurative visual stimuli (specifically representations of the sun and the moon) and musical excerpts. For this, two experiments were conceived. The first examined systematic crossmodal correspondences through semantic differential and direct associations tasks. The second experiment aimed to understand how these crossmodal sensory interactions affect pupil responses. The results of the first experiment indicate a strong and significant relationship between visual works (paintings) and auditory stimuli (musical excerpts) in terms of semantic and direct associations, pointing to a crossmodal perceptual connection between these stimuli. The results of the second experiment suggest congruence effects on pupil responses.