Media release

From: The Royal Society

High pitch sounds small for domestic dogs: Abstract crossmodal correspondences between auditory pitch and visual size

Humans associate large object with low-pitched sounds and small objects with high-pitched sounds even in abstract stimuli e.g., artificial images and tones. But are people unique in making these associations? We presented dogs with two objects (big and small), one of which made a sound. We manipulated the sound-pitch so it matched (e.g., small size + high pitch) or didn't match (e.g., small size + low pitch) the object it came from. We found that the type of pitch-size pairing made a difference to dogs’ choices and reaction times demonstrating that this intuitive association might be a shared mammalian trait. 

Pitch paw-fect - Even dogs associate low-pitched noises with large objects, and high-pitched noises with small objects, like a big bass drum and a small whistle. Dogs, trained to touch an object after it emitted a noise, responded slower if the sound did not match their expectations.  This is the first evidence of abstract pitch-size correspondences in a nonhuman animal, the authors said.