Running head: SHAPES AND SOUNDS Shapes and sounds: An exploration of audiovisual crossmodality

An initial exploration of the relationship between harmonic timbre and visual form, the following study extends the work of Wolfgang Kohler’s 1929 study by using nonspeech sounds. Although previous studies have examined the relationship between language and shape, there has been little work investigating which properties of the acoustical signal contribute to the crossmodal linkage of auditory and visual forms. The current study indicates that listeners associate pure tones to the rounded visual object and complex tones to the more angular object, suggesting that the linkage between auditory and visual abstraction may have a deeper basis than language development, relating to the actual properties of the acoustical signal itself.