Rusconi Elena, Kwan Bonnie, Giordano Bruno L, Umiltà Carlo, Butterworth Brian
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, WC1N 3AR, London, UK.
Cognition. 2006 Mar;99(2):113-29. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2005.01.004. Epub 2005 May 31.
Through the preferential pairing of response positions to pitch, here we show that the internal representation of pitch height is spatial in nature and affects performance, especially in musically trained participants, when response alternatives are either vertically or horizontally aligned. The finding that our cognitive system maps pitch height onto an internal representation of space, which in turn affects motor performance even when this perceptual attribute is irrelevant to the task, extends previous studies on auditory perception and suggests an interesting analogy between music perception and mathematical cognition. Both the basic elements of mathematical cognition (i.e. numbers) and the basic elements of musical cognition (i.e. pitches), appear to be mapped onto a mental spatial representation in a way that affects motor performance.
通过响应位置与音高的优先配对，我们在此表明，音高的内部表征本质上是空间性的，并且会影响表现，尤其是在经过音乐训练的参与者中，当响应选项垂直或水平对齐时。我们的认知系统将音高映射到空间的内部表征上，这一发现进而影响运动表现，即使这种感知属性与任务无关，这一发现扩展了先前关于听觉感知的研究，并暗示了音乐感知与数学认知之间有趣的类比。数学认知的基本元素（即数字）和音乐认知的基本元素（即音高），似乎都以一种影响运动表现的方式映射到心理空间表征上。
