Irrelevant visual stimuli improve auditory task performance
Irrelevant visual stimuli improve auditory task performance
Multisensory behavioral benefits generally occur when one modality provides improved or disambiguating information to another. Here, we show benefits when no information is apparently provided. Participants performed an auditory frequency discrimination task in which auditory stimuli were paired with uninformative visual stimuli. Visual-auditory stimulus onset asynchrony was varied between -10 ms (sound first) to 80 ms without compromising perceptual simultaneity. In most stimulus onset asynchrony conditions, response times to audiovisual pairs were significantly shorter than auditory-alone controls. This suggests a general processing advantage for multisensory stimuli over unisensory stimuli, even when only one modality is informative. Response times were shortest with an auditory delay of 65 ms, indicating an audiovisual 'perceptual optimum' that may be related to processing simultaneity.
553-557
Thorne, Jeremy
c4cc08f5-d993-4dec-9dd1-3f4772e34095
Debener, Stefan
e6bf9143-09a8-45c0-8536-3564885375d4
26 March 2008
Thorne, Jeremy
c4cc08f5-d993-4dec-9dd1-3f4772e34095
Debener, Stefan
e6bf9143-09a8-45c0-8536-3564885375d4
Thorne, Jeremy and Debener, Stefan
(2008)
Irrelevant visual stimuli improve auditory task performance.
NeuroReport, 19 (5), .
(doi:10.1097/WNR.0b013e3282f8b1b6).
Abstract
Multisensory behavioral benefits generally occur when one modality provides improved or disambiguating information to another. Here, we show benefits when no information is apparently provided. Participants performed an auditory frequency discrimination task in which auditory stimuli were paired with uninformative visual stimuli. Visual-auditory stimulus onset asynchrony was varied between -10 ms (sound first) to 80 ms without compromising perceptual simultaneity. In most stimulus onset asynchrony conditions, response times to audiovisual pairs were significantly shorter than auditory-alone controls. This suggests a general processing advantage for multisensory stimuli over unisensory stimuli, even when only one modality is informative. Response times were shortest with an auditory delay of 65 ms, indicating an audiovisual 'perceptual optimum' that may be related to processing simultaneity.
This record has no associated files available for download.
More information
Published date: 26 March 2008
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 70247
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/70247
PURE UUID: 3773bcf9-ada5-463a-9764-8f9e06c699be
Catalogue record
Date deposited: 05 Mar 2010
Last modified: 13 Mar 2024 19:59
Export record
Altmetrics
Contributors
Author:
Jeremy Thorne
Author:
Stefan Debener
Download statistics
Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.
View more statistics