Sensory integration of auditory and visual information.

In exp. I with 3 male and 1 female o, the bisensory recognition of simultaneously presented auditory and visual verbal information was measured as a function of auditory and visual recognition. It is shown that bisensory performance is superior to performance predicted by a model that assumes the 2 modalities are processing the information independently. Instead integrative processing is suggested. In previous studies using theory of signal detectability (tsd), independent processing of bisensory presentations of mathematically equivalent stimuli has been shown. Present results suggest that the mathematically equated stimuli in those studies were not cognitively equivalent. Exp. Ii with 3 male os lends support to this notion by (a) using verbal information in a tsd paradigm, and (b) showing that when the stimuli are equivalent the results are consistent with a model in which bisensory processing occurs integratively on a common decision axis. However, when the stimuli to each mode are not equivalent, results are consistent with a model in which bisensory processing occurs independently on separate decision axes. (french summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's memory for auditory and visual information on television.

Examined the relationship between children's cognitive processing of video and audio information on TV. 96 5-yr-olds viewed a videotaped segment of Sesame Street followed by comprehension and recognition tests. Ss viewed experimental segments in which (a) the audio and video tracks were from the same segment (A/V match), (b) the audio and video tracks were not from the same segment (A/V mismatch), (c) the video track was presented alone, or (d) the audio track was presented alone. This design allowed unconfounded comparisons of modality-specific processing. In the A/V mismatch condition, memory for audio information was reduced more than memory for video information. However, comprehension and recognition of audio information was similar in the audio-only and A/V match conditions. Results suggest that in regular TV programs, the video information does not interfere with processing the audio information but is more salient and memorable than the audio material. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Communicating directional information with an auditory display.

Examined whether right or left commands could be communicated more effectively using symbolic, directional, or combined directional and symbolic cues. In a choice RT task, 36 male and 36 female undergraduates pressed a right- or left-hand key in response to (a) 1,000 or 4,000 Hz. binaural tonal commands (symbolic cue), (b) a single pure monaural tone (directional cue), and (c) 1,000 or 4,000 Hz. monaural tonal commands in the ear corresponding to the symbolic content of the command (combined directional and symbolic cues). The combined (redundant) cue condition produced the fastest RT, while RT to the directional cue alone was faster than to the symbolic cue alone. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Processing auditory information: Interaction of two population stereotypes.

40 undergraduates moved a toggle switch up or down depending on the pitch (high or low) of a stimulus tone that emanated from a top or bottom speaker. Ss were instructed to move the switch up in response to the high-pitched tone and down in response to the low-pitched tone (corresponding stimulus-response mapping) while the other 20 were given the reverse tone-response rule (noncorresponding stimulus-response mapping). Reactions were faster on corresponding than on noncorresponding trials, and on the corresponding trials, Ss responded faster when the source and symbolic content of the auditory stimulus coresponded than when they did not. Results are discussed in terms of an interaction between 2 potent population stereotypes, a frequency-space stereotype and a tendency to respond toward the source of stimulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of auditory numerical information on infants' looking behavior: Contradictory evidence.

Seven-month-old infants saw pairs of slides of two and three objects while listening to either two or three drum beats. Subjects looked longer at the noncorresponding display, particularly during the second block of 16 trials. These results are not in accord with those of Starkey, Spelke, and Gelman (1983). Although 7-month-old infants' attentiveness to a visually presented numerical event might be influenced by auditory information, the data call into question the suggestion that this influence is mediated by crossmodal matching of numerical information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Processing auditory information: Interference from an irrelevant cue.

In a choice RT task, 64 undergraduates pressed either a right- or left-hand key in response to directional commands provided by 400- and 1000-cps tones. On monaural trials, RT was significantly faster when the meaning of the tonal command corresponded with the ear in which it was heard (corresponding trials) than when it did not (noncorresponding trials). A comparison of monaural with binaural RT indicated that this Tonal Command * Ear Stimulated interaction was due to interference on the noncorresponding monaural trials rather than facilitation on the corresponding trials. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Constraints common to apparent motion in visual, tactile, and auditory space.

A point-like stimulus was presented in a clockwise or counterclockwise sequence at 3, 4, 6, or 12 uniformly spaced locations around a circle in visual, tactile, or auditory space. In 4 experiments, the simulators were (a) light-emitting diodes in the frontal plane, (b) mechanical stimulators on the palm, (c) airpuff nozzles around the head, and (d) loudspeakers around the head. For each spatial separation and stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) between successive stimuli around the circle, participants reported the direction of motion. Within each modality, the SOA required for 75% accurate discrimination of direction increased with the spatial separations. A time–distance constraint akin to Korte's third law of visual apparent motion can thus be obtained from responses that are objectively classifiable as correct or incorrect (without relying on subjective reports of "goodness" of apparent motion). Moreover, this time-distance constraint evidently generalizes across sensory modalities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Constraints on accessing abstract source information: Instantiation of principles facilitates children's analogical transfer.

An abstract principle provided as source information alone often fails to enhance analogical transfer. Two experiments were conducted to investigate the circumstances under which an abstract statement promotes analogical problem solving in children. External instantiation (providing concrete examples, with similar or dissimilar surface features along with an abstract statement) and internal instantiation (encouraging learners to generate concrete examples of the abstract statement) were equally effective in facilitating transfer. Adding explicit causal relations in the source statements did not significantly enhance transfer. These results suggest that abstract information by itself is less accessible because it lacks superficial features similar to the target problem and lacks example-specific contextual information. Educational implications of the effects of external and internal instantiations are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Coding of the acoustic information in the superior auditory centers

The internal ear may be considered analysing acoustical signals in the frequency domain. This spectral analysis appears in the auditory pathways as a place code, each neuron being activated for a narrow and well defined frequency band. But in addition to this place code, temporal information on the phase and the period of low frequency signals is preserved in the low auditory centers. In the medial geniculate body, the last relay before the cerebral cortex, the place code shows the same properties as in lower centers but with a greater diversity in the response patterns and tuning properties. The tonotopic organization is less precise and, for the pars lateralis, follows the histological lamellar organization of this region. The most lateral laminae are composed of cells responding to low frequencies, the most medial ones of high frequency cells. In the auditory cortex intracellular recordings confirm the importance of an active inhibition underlying the diverse response patterns observed. Persistance of a time code is shown by certain cells presenting responses precisely time-locked to individual clicks in a train for rates ranging from 50 to 1000 Hz. Other cells respond selectively for certain click train frequencies without marking the temporal structure of the stimuli. Thus a temporal and a place code are still both present at the cortical level for this particular kind of signals.     

Effects of temporal placement of unfavorable information on decision making during the selection interview.

126 male evening school management students rated an applicant for employment after listening to standardized audio tapes of a simulated interview in which the location and content of 1 piece of unfavorable information was systematically varied. An 18-cell analysis of variance design was used which counterbalanced the temporal placement of the unfavorable information, the content area in which it occurred, and the order of the content areas. Scores on the Dogmatism Scale (Rokeach) were analyzed with multiple-regression techniques. The temporal placement effect was significant at the .01 level. None of the other effects were significant. It was concluded that the temporal placement of the unfavorable information accounted for a statistically significant percentage of the variance in the ratings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Constraints on the abstraction of solutions.

Students in college algebra classes attempted to solve a series of three mixture problems and three distance problems and to match concepts between the first two problems in a series. The detailed comparison of two isomorphs did not result in the abstraction of a solution schema, as it was found to do by M. L. Gick and K. J. Holyoak (see record 1983-20819-001) for convergence problems. Attempts to promote abstraction by not allowing students to refer to a specific analogue (Experiment 2) and by providing information about corresponding concepts and principles (Experiment 3) were unsuccessful. These findings suggest that the bottom-up, similarity-based approaches encouraged by mapping concepts may need to be supplemented by top-down, principle-driven instruction. The abstraction of solutions is constrained by (1) the requirement to successfully compare two specific analogues (the bootstrapping constraint) and (2) the existence of superordinate concepts to describe the abstraction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Early and late selection in unconscious information processing.

In four experiments, we investigated whether masked stimuli in priming experiments are subjected to early or to late selection. In Experiment 1, participants classified four target-pictures as being small or large. In line with early selection accounts, prime-pictures with a different perceptual appearance as the experienced targets did not elicit congruency effect. In Experiment 2, 40 targets all depicting animals were presented. Results were in line with late selections assumptions because novel animal primes but not novel primes from different semantic categories yielded congruency effects. In Experiment 3, the targets were chosen such that there is a second semantic feature that covaried with the required response. Here, novel primes picturing small animals did not influence target responses with regard to the instructed size classification, but with regard to their affiliation to the category animal. In Experiment 4, small and large pictures from two categories were presented. Category match did not influence priming, ruling out that feature overlap contaminated the former results. The results indicate that participants’ prestimulus expectations determine in which stage in the processing-stream masked stimuli are selected. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The cascaded nature of lexical selection and integration in auditory sentence processing.

An event-related brain potential experiment was carried out to investigate the temporal relationship between lexical selection and the semantic integration in auditory sentence processing. Participants were presented with spoken sentences that ended with a word that was either semantically congruent or anomalous. Information about the moment in which a sentence-final word could uniquely be identified, its isolation point (IP), was compared with the onset of the elicited N400 congruity effect, reflecting semantic integration processing. The results revealed that the onset of the N400 effect occurred prior to the IP of the sentence-final words. Moreover, the factor early or late IP did not affect the onset of the N400. These findings indicate that lexical selection and semantic integration are cascading processes, in that semantic integration processing can start before the acoustic information allows the selection of a unique candidate and seems to be attempted in parallel for multiple candidates that are still compatible with the bottom-up acoustic input. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Optimal integration of auditory and vibrotactile information for judgments of temporal order.

Recent research that assessed spatial judgments about multisensory stimuli suggests that humans integrate multisensory inputs in a statistically optimal manner by weighting each input by its normalized reciprocal variance. Is integration similarly optimal when humans judge the temporal properties of bimodal stimuli? Twenty-four participants performed temporal order judgments (TOJs) about 2 spatially separated stimuli. Stimuli were auditory, vibrotactile, or both. The temporal profiles of vibrotactile stimuli were manipulated to produce 3 levels of precision for TOJs. In bimodal conditions, the asynchrony between the 2 unimodal stimuli that comprised a bimodal stimulus was manipulated to determine the weight given to touch. Bimodal performance on 2 measures—judgment uncertainty and tactile weight—was predicted with unimodal data. A model relying exclusively on audition was rejected on the basis of both measures. A second model that selected the best input on each trial did not predict the reduced judgment uncertainty observed in bimodal trials. Only the optimal maximum-likelihood-estimation model predicted both judgment uncertainties and weights; the model’s validity is extended to TOJs. Alternatives for modeling the process of event sequencing based on integrated multisensory inputs are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the normative justification for information gain in Wason's selection task.

M. Oaksford and N. Chater (1994, 1996) presented a rational analysis of Wason's selection task in which human performance was argued to be optimal when contrasted with the normative yardstick of Bayesian statistics rather than formal logic. In the present article, it is shown that selecting data according to expected information gain, as proposed by Oaksford and Chater, leads to suboptimal performance in Bayesian hypothesis testing. Procedures are presented that are better justified normatively, their psychological implications are explored, and a number of novel predictions are derived under the sequential as well as the more adequate nonsequential interpretation of the task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Missing information in selection: An application of the Einhorn-Hogarth ambiguity model.

This article argues that the devaluation of options with missing information, found in previous research, is a specific example of ambiguity avoidance in choice. H. J. Einhorn and R. M. Hogarth's (see record 1986-13621-001) ambiguity model was used to make predictions concerning responses to missing information in an employee-selection context. A within-subjects design was used to test the hypothesis that decision makers would avoid options with missing information when they were anticipating gain, but they would prefer such options when they were anticipating loss. Degree of ambiguity was expected to interact with this effect. The results supported the hypothesized effect of decision-maker perspective on choice. However, although there was a significant interaction between decision-maker perspective and degree of ambiguity, it was not of the nature that was predicted by the Einhorn-Hogarth model. Generalized pessimism was negatively correlated with preferences for missing-information options. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Constraints on the effects of mood on memory.

In Study 1, pleasant and unpleasant personality trait words and abstract nouns were encoded in neutral mood and recalled in either induced depressed or induced happy mood, using 32 female and 32 male undergraduates assigned in equal numbers to 1 of the 4 conditions. Females recalled more pleasant than unpleasant words when in a happy mood and more unpleasant than pleasant words when in a depressed mood. Males failed to show this effect. Both sexes responded equally well to the induction procedures. There were no sex differences in pleasantness ratings of the words to be recalled. A prediction that differential effects of mood on recall would be greater for trait words than abstract nouns was not confirmed. In Study 2, everyday usage ratings by 36 Ss from Study 1 were obtained for the trait words from Study 1. Females gave higher usage ratings than males and, within the females, usage predicted the extent to which a word was preferentially recalled in a congruent mood state. Findings are discussed in relation to the associative network model of mood and memory, sex differences in depression, and cognitive vulnerability to depression. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The duality of selection: Excitatory and inhibitory processes in auditory selective attention.

Behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) measurements were made in an auditory selective-attention paradigm, both before and after a series of inhibition or discrimination training sessions. The presence of distractors caused poor perceptual sensitivity, weak P3 responses, conservative responding, and slow reaction times relative to baseline. Distraction prompted a frontal enhancement of ERP components occurring 100-250 ms after the onset of attended signals (N1, P2, and N2). Training ameliorated behavioral interference from distraction. Participants receiving inhibition training acquired improved inhibitory processing of distractors, an effect that peaked 200 ms after distractor onset, In a proposed model, distinct excitatory and inhibitory mechanisms work interactively to maintain sensitivity to environmental change in the fare of disruption from the contextual integration of irrelevant events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of spatial and nonspatial information in visual selection.

Even though it is undisputed that prior information regarding the location of a target affects visual selection, the issue of whether information regarding nonspatial features, such as color and shape, has similar effects has been a matter of debate since the early 1980s. In the study described in this article, measures derived from signal detection theory were used to show that perceptual sensitivity is affected by a top-down set for spatial information but not by a top-down set for nonspatial information. This indicates that knowing where the target singleton is affects perceptual selectivity but that knowing what it is does not help selectivity. Furthermore, perceptual sensitivity can be enhanced by nonspatial features, but only through a process related to bottom-up priming. These findings have important implications for models of visual selection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Integration of auditory and kinesthetic information in motion: Alterations in Parkinson's disease.

The main aim in this work was to study the interaction between auditory and kinesthetic stimuli and its influence on motion control. The study was performed on healthy subjects and patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). Thirty-five right-handed volunteers (young, PD, and age-matched healthy participants, and PD-patients) were studied with three different motor tasks (slow cyclic movements, fast cyclic movements, and slow continuous movements) and under the action of kinesthetic stimuli and sounds at different beat rates. The action of kinesthesia was evaluated by comparing real movements with virtual movements (movements imaged but not executed). The fast cyclic task was accelerated by kinesthetic but not by auditory stimuli. The slow cyclic task changed with the beat rate of sounds but not with kinesthetic stimuli. The slow continuous task showed an integrated response to both sensorial modalities. These data show that the influence of the multisensory integration on motion changes with the motor task and that some motor patterns are modulated by the simultaneous action of auditory and kinesthetic information, a cross-modal integration that was different in PD-patients. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)