Singing Numbers... in Cognitive Space - A dual-task study of the link between pitch, space and numbers

We assessed the automaticity of spatial-numerical and spatial-musical associations bytesting their intentionality and load sensitivity in a dual-task paradigm. In separatesessions, 16 healthy adults performed magnitude and pitch comparisons on sungnumbers with variable pitch. Stimuli and response alternatives were identical, but therelevant stimulus attribute (pitch or number) differed between tasks. Concomitant tasksrequired retention of either colour or location information. Results show that spatialassociations of both magnitude and pitch are load-sensitive and that the spatialassociation for pitch is more powerful than that for magnitude. These findings argueagainst the automaticity of spatial mappings in either stimulus dimension.