Cross-Modal Associations Between Color and Touch: Mapping Haptic and Tactile Terms to the Surface of the Munsell Color Solid

Abstract

This study investigated cross-modal associations between color and touch using a matching task. Participants matched colors drawn from the surface of the Munsell color solid to antonym pairs of haptic/tactile adjectives. For most of the term pairs assessed ( soft / hard , smooth / rough , flat / uneven , slippery / not slippery , light / heavy , thin / thick and round / sharp ) matching appears predominantly influenced by lightness, with the first term from each pair matched to light colors and the other to dark colors, a result in close agreement with previous research. For two terms, warm and wet , there were clear influences of hue on task performance. There were also similarities between patterns of color matching to several of the haptic/tactile terms assessed and color matching to another term, dislike . This suggests valence may play a mediating role in cross-modal associations involving touch and color.