Sound-shape associations, a subset of cross-modal associations between the auditory and visual domain, have been studied mainly in the context of matching a set of purposefully crafted shapes to sounds. Recent studies have explored how humans represent sound through free-form sketching and how a graphical sketch input could be used for sound production. In this paper, the potential of communicating sound characteristics through these free-form sketches is investigated in a gamified study that was conducted with eighty-two participants at two online exhibition events. The results show that participants managed to recognise sounds at a higher rate than the random baseline would suggest, however it appeared difficult to visually encode nuanced timbral differences.

翻译：声音形状协会是听觉和视觉领域之间跨模式协会的一个子集,主要在将一套特意设计的形状与声音相匹配的背景下进行了研究;最近的研究探讨了人类如何通过自由成形的草图表达声音,以及如何将图形草图输入用于声音制作;在本文中,通过这些自由成像的草图来交流声音特征的潜力在与82名参与者在两次在线展览活动中进行的拼图研究中得到了调查;结果显示,参与者能够以高于随机基线的速度识别声音,但似乎很难将细微的质谱差异进行视觉编码。