Matching Visual and Acoustic Mirror Forms
1
Department of Humanities, University of Macerata, Macerata 62100, Italy
2
Department of Human Sciences, University of Verona, Verona 37129, Italy
3
Guitar Maestro, Fermo 63900, Italy
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Marco Bertamini
Symmetry 2017, 9(3), 39; https://doi.org/10.3390/sym9030039
Received: 24 January 2017 / Accepted: 2 March 2017 / Published: 10 March 2017
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Symmetry in Vision)
This paper presents a comparative analysis of the ability to recognize three mirror forms in visual and acoustic tasks: inversion (reflection on a horizontal axis), retrograde (reflection on a vertical axis) and retrograde inversion (reflection on both horizontal and vertical axes). Dynamic patterns consisting of five tones in succession in the acoustic condition and five square dots in succession in the visual condition were presented to 180 non‐musically expert participants. In a yes/no task, they were asked to ascertain whether a comparison stimulus represented the “target” transformation (i.e., inversion, retrograde or retrograde inversion). Three main results emerged. Firstly, the fact that symmetry pertaining to a vertical axis is the most easily perceived does not only apply to static visual configurations (as found in previous literature) but also applies to dynamic visual configurations and acoustic stimuli where it is in fact even more marked. Secondly, however, differences emerged between the facility with which the three mirror forms were recognized in the acoustic and visual tasks. Thirdly, when the five elements in the stimulus were not of the same duration and therefore a rhythmic structure emerged, performance improved not only in the acoustic but also (even more significantly) in the visual task.
View Full-Text
▼
Show Figures
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
- Supplementary File 1:
RAR-Document (RAR, 3848 KiB)
MDPI and ACS Style
Bianchi, I.; Burro, R.; Pezzola, R.; Savardi, U. Matching Visual and Acoustic Mirror Forms. Symmetry 2017, 9, 39. https://doi.org/10.3390/sym9030039
AMA Style
Bianchi I, Burro R, Pezzola R, Savardi U. Matching Visual and Acoustic Mirror Forms. Symmetry. 2017; 9(3):39. https://doi.org/10.3390/sym9030039
Chicago/Turabian StyleBianchi, Ivana; Burro, Roberto; Pezzola, Roberta; Savardi, Ugo. 2017. "Matching Visual and Acoustic Mirror Forms" Symmetry 9, no. 3: 39. https://doi.org/10.3390/sym9030039
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
Search more from Scilit