Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The iconic cross-modal correspondence between fundamentalfrequency and location in vertical space (“high is up”) has longbeen described in the literature. However, an explanation forthis relationship has not been proposed. We conducted an ex-periment in which participants shot at cans projected on thewall in different vertical positions. We found that mean funda-mental frequency was significantly influenced by vertical headposition. Moving the head upwards changes the position of thelarynx, which pulls on the cricothyroid muscle and changes thefundamental frequency. We thus propose that the iconic rela-tionship between fundamental frequency and vertical space isgrounded in the body.