12 students rated the experienced similarities among 16 compound visual-auditory stimuli. Each of 4 colors was combined with each of 4 musical chords to form 16 color-chord impressions. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling of the 16 × 16 matrix of similarity data yielded an orderly and interpretable solution in two dimensions. The results suggest that the color-chord combinations produced psychologically integrated impressions which varied along orthogonal dimensions of darkness (versus lightness) and spread (versus compactness) of chords.
A new nonmetric multidimensional scaling method for sorting data
