Effect of color on pitch discrimination of pure tone

Abstract

Multimedia applications make researchers focus on the simultaneous effect of visual and auditory stimulation. Previous research revealed many facts about visual-auditory interaction. But the relationship between colors and pitch discrimination was hardly discussed. In this paper, the influence of colors on pitch discrimination of pure tones was investigated. Different color stimuli were used in subjective experiments of measuring the accuracy of pitch discrimination, and the data were compared with auditory-only experiments. Experimental results showed that the accuracy of pitch identification with color stimuli increases. Warm colors and cold colors did not have remarkable difference. The accuracy increased most when the color was blue. Further analysis showed that if the discrimination task was more difficult,the influence of colors was correspondingly more observable.