Can Melodic Contour Help Encoding Luminance Sequences? A Crossmodal Short-Term Memory Study

Contour, the “shape” of a melody defined by the direction of pitch changes, is a key feature for melody perception and memory. Beyond pitch, contour can also be conveyed through other auditory and visual dimensions, such as loudness, spatial position, or luminance. Previous findings have shown that musically trained individuals better memorize contour sequences implemented without pitch variation, by mentally representing them as melodies (Talamini et al., 2022). In this study, we tested nonmusicians (N = 40) to investigate whether short-term memory for visual contour sequences could be facilitated when preceded by a contour-matched melody. In each trial, participants compared two luminance sequences (S1, S2) and judged whether they were the same or different. Half of the trials were preceded by a melody matching the contour of S1. Music and pitch perception skills were also assessed. Results revealed that when the luminance sequences were preceded by a melody, performance was higher than without a preceding melody, but only for the most difficult sequences. Moreover, music and pitch perception skills were moderately correlated with performance in the luminance short-term memory task. These findings offer new insights into cross-modal contour perception and memory, opening new possibilities for investigating the underlying cognitive mechanisms of contour perception.