Effects of redundant visual stimuli on temporal order judgments

Four experiments were conducted in order to compare the effects of stimulus redundancy on temporal order judgments (TOJs) and reaction times (RTs). In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were presented in each trial with a tone and either a single visual stimulus or two redundant visual stimuli. They were asked to judge whether the tone or the visual display was presented first. Judgments of the relative onset times of the visual and the auditory stimuli were virtually unaffected by the presentation of redundant, rather than single, visual stimuli. Experiments 3 and 4 used simple RT tasks with the same stimuli, and responses were much faster to redundant than to single visual stimuli. It appears that the traditional speedup of RT associated with redundant visual stimuli arises after the stimulus detection processes to which TOJs are sensitive.     

Deficits in temporal sequencing of verbal material: The effect of laterality of lesion

Temporal sequencing of verbal materials (digits, words, and geometric forms) presented in two sensory modalities (auditory and visual) to three groups of subjects (Broca's with left anterior lesions, patients with right hemisphere lesions, and normals) was examined. Each subject was asked to point to a set of stimuli in the same sequence as presented by the examiner. Results indicated that patients with left hemisphere lesions were more impaired on all tasks than the right hemisphere lesioned patients who, in turn, were impaired compared to normal controls. Response to auditory presentation was superior to response to visual presentation. Also, digits were the easiest for all groups, and words were easier than geometric forms. Of special interest was the finding which suggested that right hemisphere lesions are associated with impairment of verbal temporal sequencing under either auditory or visual presentation.     

Duration discrimination in the context of age,sex, and cognition

It has been proposed that the perception of very short duration is governed by sensory mechanisms, whereas the perception of longer duration depends on cognitive capacities. Four duration discrimination tasks (modalities: visual, auditory; base duration: 100 ms, 1000 ms) were used to study the relation between time perception, age, sex, and cognitive abilities (alertness, visual and verbal working memory, general fluid reasoning) in 100 subjects aged between 21 and 84 years. Temporal acuity was higher (Weber fractions are lower) for longer stimuli and for the auditory modality. Age was related to the visual 100 ms condition only, with lower temporal acuity in elder participants. Alertness was significantly related to auditory and visual Weber fractions for shorter stimuli only. Additionally, visual working memory was a significant predictor for shorter visual stimuli. These results indicate that alertness, but also working memory, are associated with temporal discrimination of very brief duration.     

Defective stimulus set attention in generalized epilepsy

This study examined auditory selective attention in primary generalized and complex-partial (temporal lobe) epileptics using binaural and dichotic versions of the Continuous Performance Test. The patient groups did not differ from normal controls when only one channel was presented or when divided attention (simultaneously monitoring two channels) was required. However, generalized epileptics had significantly depressed hit rates when directed attention (responding to critical stimuli in only one channel) was required. These results suggest a contribution of brain stem “arousal” mechanisms to stimulus set attention. In addition, right ear perceptual advantages were found on these dichotic monitoring tasks, lending support to the contention that short-term auditory memory and verbal report are not required for the dichotic ear effect.     

Perception of Temporal Order: The Effects of Age,Sex, and Cognitive Factors

ABSTRACT

The present paper investigates the effects of age, sex, and cognitive factors on temporal-order perception. Nine temporal-order tasks were employed using two and four stimuli presented in the auditory and visual modalities. Significantly increased temporal-order thresholds (TOT) in the elderly were found for almost all tasks, while sex differences were only observed for two tasks. Multiple regression analyses show that the performance on most temporal-order tasks can be predicted by cognitive factors, such as speed of fluid reasoning, short-term memory, and attention. However, age was a significant predictor of TOT in three tasks using visual stimuli. We conclude (1) that age-related differences can often be attributed to cognitive factors involved in temporal-order perception, and (2) that the concept of temporal-order perception is more complex than implied by the current models.     

Individual reactions to a multisensory immersive virtual environment: the impact of a wind farm on individuals

The aim of this study was to assess the impact of a wind farm on individuals by means of an audio-visual methodology that tried to simulate biologically plausible individual-environment interactions. To disentangle the effects of auditory and visual components on cognitive performances and subjective evaluations, unimodal (Audio or Video) and bimodal (Audio + Video) approaches were compared. Participants were assigned to three experimental conditions that reproduced a wind farm by means of an immersive virtual reality system: bimodal condition, reproducing scenarios with both acoustic and visual stimuli; unimodal visual condition, with only visual stimuli; unimodal auditory condition, with only auditory stimuli. While immersed in the virtual scenarios, participants performed tasks assessing verbal fluency, short-term verbal memory, backward counting, and distance estimations (egocentric: how far is the turbine from you?; allocentric: how far is the turbine from the target?). Afterwards, participants reported their degree of visual and noise annoyance. The results revealed that the presence of a visual scenario as compared to the only availability of auditory stimuli may exert a negative effect on resource-demanding cognitive tasks but a positive effect on perceived noise annoyance. This supports the idea that humans perceive the environment holistically and that auditory and visual features are processed in close interaction.     

Stimulus modality and working memory performance in Greek children with reading disabilities: Additional evidence for the pictorial superiority hypothesis

This study investigated the effects of stimulus presentation modality on working memory performance in children with reading disabilities (RD) and in typically developing children (TDC), all native speakers of Greek. It was hypothesized that the visual presentation of common objects would result in improved learning and recall performance as compared to the auditory presentation of stimuli. Twenty children, ages 10–12, diagnosed with RD were matched to 20 TDC age peers. The experimental tasks implemented a multitrial verbal learning paradigm incorporating three modalities: auditory, visual, and auditory plus visual. Significant group differences were noted on language, verbal and nonverbal memory, and measures of executive abilities. A mixed-model MANOVA indicated that children with RD had a slower learning curve and recalled fewer words than TDC across experimental modalities. Both groups of participants benefited from the visual presentation of objects; however, children with RD showed the greatest gains during this condition. In conclusion, working memory for common verbal items is impaired in children with RD; however, performance can be facilitated, and learning efficiency maximized, when information is presented visually. The results provide further evidence for the pictorial superiority hypothesis and the theory that pictorial presentation of verbal stimuli is adequate for dual coding.     

Modality effects and the structure of short-term verbal memory

The effects of auditory and visual presentation upon short-term retention of verbal stimuli are reviewed, and a model of the structure of short-term memory is presented. The main assumption of the model is that verbal information presented to the auditory and visual modalities is processed in separate streams that have different properties and capabilities. Auditory items are automatically encoded in both the A (acoustic) code, which, in the absence of subsequent input, can be maintained for some time without deliberate allocation of attention, and a P (phonological) code. Visual items are retained in both the P code and a visual code. Within the auditory stream, successive items are strongly associated; in contrast, in the visual modality, it is simultaneously presented items that are strongly associated. These assumptions about the structure of short-term verbal memory are shown to account for many of the observed effect of presentation modality.     

Testing visual short-term memory: Simultaneous versus sequential presentations

Two experiments testing immediate ordered recall are presented; in these experiments, subjects engaged in repetitive speech (“articulatory suppression”) during a visual presentation in order to prevent auditory recoding of the stimuli. In both experiments, a simultaneous presentation produced results that suggested the use of visual short-term memory, whereas a sequential presentation did not. In Experiment 1, visual confusion errors occurred more often than would be expected by chance for a simultaneous presentation but not for a sequential presentation. In Experiment 2, recall from visual short-term memory was expected to suffer more when subjects wrote a prefix than when they spoke a prefix; this effect occurred for a simultaneous presentation but not for a sequential presentation. These results suggest that existence of a visual short term store that retains a simultaneous presentation but not a sequential presentation.     

A systematic investigation of same and cross modality priming using written and spoken responses

Effects of presentation modality and response format were investigated using visual and auditory versions of the word stem completion task. Study presentation conditions (visual, auditory, non-studied) were manipulated within participants, while test conditions (visual/written, visual/spoken, auditory/written, auditory/spoken, recall-only) were manipulated between participants. Results showed evidence for same modality and cross modality priming on all four word stem completion tasks. Words from the visual study list led to comparable levels of priming across all test conditions. In contrast, words from the auditory study list led to relatively low levels of priming in the visual/written test condition and high levels of priming in the auditory/spoken test condition. Response format was found to influence priming performance following auditory study in particular. The findings confirm and extend previous research and suggest that, for implicit memory studies that require auditory presentation, it may be especially beneficial to use spoken rather than written responses.     

视空间和听觉数字记忆的混合广度

Ｆｒｉｃｋ成功地增加了混合通道的广度,其必要条件是同时呈现视觉刺激和反序报告。该文采用干扰更少的Ｃｏｒｓｉ视空间测验,即序列呈现视觉刺激,并用正序报告,进行混合广度的新实验。发现在分离通道报告的条件下其混合广度都明显地高于单一通道的广度,因此Ｆｒｉｃｋ的两个必要条件不总是必需的。这种新的混合广度实验可能对研究工作记忆的中央执行系统有益。比较了刺激呈现模式和被试反应方式对混合广度的影响     

Modality effects in retrieval of information from short-term memory

Retrieval from short-term memory was studied in a reaction time task, Ss decided whether or not a target item was present in a memorized list. When modality of presentation was manipulated, fastest reaction times resulted if the target item and all memory items were presented auditorily. All conditions involving pure visual presentation or mixed auditory-visual presentation resulted in reaction times which were longer than those for the pure auditory conditions out which did not differ from each other. This suggests that retrieval can be trom either a precategorical auditory memory or a postcategorical memory which does not preserve the sensory features of the memorized material.     

Crossmodal attention switching: Auditory dominance in temporal discrimination tasks

Visual stimuli are often processed more efficiently than accompanying stimuli in another modality. In line with this “visual dominance”, earlier studies on attentional switching showed a clear benefit for visual stimuli in a bimodal visual–auditory modality-switch paradigm that required spatial stimulus localization in the relevant modality. The present study aimed to examine the generality of this visual dominance effect. The modality appropriateness hypothesis proposes that stimuli in different modalities are differentially effectively processed depending on the task dimension, so that processing of visual stimuli is favored in the dimension of space, whereas processing auditory stimuli is favored in the dimension of time. In the present study, we examined this proposition by using a temporal duration judgment in a bimodal visual–auditory switching paradigm. Two experiments demonstrated that crossmodal interference (i.e., temporal stimulus congruence) was larger for visual stimuli than for auditory stimuli, suggesting auditory dominance when performing temporal judgment tasks. However, attention switch costs were larger for the auditory modality than for visual modality, indicating a dissociation of the mechanisms underlying crossmodal competition in stimulus processing and modality-specific biasing of attentional set.     

Auditory and visual memory in musicians and nonmusicians

Numerous studies have shown that musicians outperform nonmusicians on a variety of tasks. Here we provide the first evidence that musicians have superior auditory recognition memory for both musical and nonmusical stimuli, compared to nonmusicians. However, this advantage did not generalize to the visual domain. Previously, we showed that auditory recognition memory is inferior to visual recognition memory. Would this be true even for trained musicians? We compared auditory and visual memory in musicians and nonmusicians using familiar music, spoken English, and visual objects. For both groups, memory for the auditory stimuli was inferior to memory for the visual objects. Thus, although considerable musical training is associated with better musical and nonmusical auditory memory, it does not increase the ability to remember sounds to the levels found with visual stimuli. This suggests a fundamental capacity difference between auditory and visual recognition memory, with a persistent advantage for the visual domain.     

Absence of a cross-modal “suffix effect” in short-term memory

Three experiments are reported involving the presentation of lists of either letters or digits for immediate serial recall. The main variable was the presence or absence of a suffix-prefix, an item (tick or cross) occurring at the end of the list which had to be copied before recall of the stimulus list. With auditory stimuli and an auditory suffix-prefix there was a large and selective increase in the number of errors on the last few serial positions—the typical “suffix effect”. The suffix effect was not found with auditory stimuli and a visual suffix-prefix nor with a visual stimulus and an auditory suffix-prefix. These results are interpreted as supporting a model for short-term memory proposed by Crowder and Morton (1969) in which it is suggested that with serial recall information concerning the final items following auditory presentation has a different, precategorical, origin from that concerning other items.     

Auditory and visual differences in time perception? An investigation from a developmental perspective with neuropsychological tests

Adults and children (5- and 8-year-olds) performed a temporal bisection task with either auditory or visual signals and either a short (0.5-1.0s) or long (4.0-8.0s) duration range. Their working memory and attentional capacities were assessed by a series of neuropsychological tests administered in both the auditory and visual modalities. Results showed an age-related improvement in the ability to discriminate time regardless of the sensory modality and duration. However, this improvement was seen to occur more quickly for auditory signals than for visual signals and for short durations rather than for long durations. The younger children exhibited the poorest ability to discriminate time for long durations presented in the visual modality. Statistical analyses of the neuropsychological scores revealed that an increase in working memory and attentional capacities in the visuospatial modality was the best predictor of age-related changes in temporal bisection performance for both visual and auditory stimuli. In addition, the poorer time sensitivity for visual stimuli than for auditory stimuli, especially in the younger children, was explained by the fact that the temporal processing of visual stimuli requires more executive attention than that of auditory stimuli.     

Attenuating the visual suffix effect with color

In previous studies using a short-duration visual presentation (200-340 msec), presentation of a different colored suffix did not attenuate the visual suffix effect. In Experiment 1, color attenuated the suffix effect for a longer duration visual presentation (approximately 3-4 sec) during which the subject engaged in articulatory suppression to prevent auditory recoding. Experiments 2 and 3 confirmed that color does not attenuate the suffix effect for the short-duration presentations. In Experiment 4, recall of a long-duration presentation was not improved when the last digit was a different color, suggesting that the different color of the suffix improves recall by allowing the suffix to be excluded from visual short-term memory. The attenuation by color is consistent with the hypothesis that preattentive grouping governs the entry of information into visual short-term memory.     

Effect of list length on recall after dichotomous visual presentation

A visual analogue of an auditory dichotic listening experiment was carried out using what may be termed dichotomous visual presentation of lists of either three or four stimuli. Each stimulus consisted of several identical letters which were arranged so as to form the outline of a second, large letter. Subjects attended to either the small or large letters, and recalled either the attended or unattended letters first. It was found that the results for the three-stimulus and four-stimulus lists differed substantially; they were interpreted as consistent with the model of short-term memory proposed by Broadbent (1975).     

Working memory deficits in boys with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): An examination of orthographic coding and episodic buffer processes

The episodic buffer component of working memory was examined in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and typically developing peers (TD). Thirty-two children (ADHD = 16, TD = 16) completed three versions of a phonological working memory task that varied with regard to stimulus presentation modality (auditory, visual, or dual auditory and visual), as well as a visuospatial task. Children with ADHD experienced the largest magnitude working memory deficits when phonological stimuli were presented via a unimodal, auditory format. Their performance improved during visual and dual modality conditions but remained significantly below the performance of children in the TD group. In contrast, the TD group did not exhibit performance differences between the auditory- and visual-phonological conditions but recalled significantly more stimuli during the dual-phonological condition. Furthermore, relative to TD children, children with ADHD recalled disproportionately fewer phonological stimuli as set sizes increased, regardless of presentation modality. Finally, an examination of working memory components indicated that the largest magnitude between-group difference was associated with the central executive. Collectively, these findings suggest that ADHD-related working memory deficits reflect a combination of impaired central executive and phonological storage/rehearsal processes, as well as an impaired ability to benefit from bound multimodal information processed by the episodic buffer.     

Lesions in the anterior thalamic nuclei of rats do not disrupt acquisition of stimulus sequence learning

Four experiments examined the effects of encoding multiple standards in a temporal generalization task in the visual and auditory modalities both singly and cross-modally, using stimulus durations ranging, across different experiments, from 100 to 1,400 ms. Previous work has shown that encoding and storing multiple auditory standards of different durations resulted in systematic interference with the memory of the standard, characterized by a shift in the location of peak responding, and this result, from Ogden, Wearden, and Jones (2008), was replicated in the present Experiment 1. Experiment 2 employed the basic procedure of Ogden et al. using visual stimuli and found that encoding multiple visual standards did not lead to performance deterioration or any evidence of systematic interference between the standards. Experiments 3 and 4 examined potential cross-modal interference. When two standards of different modalities and durations were encoded and stored together there was also no evidence of interference between the two. Taken together, these results, and those of Ogden et al., suggest that, in humans, visual temporal reference memory may be more permanent than auditory reference memory and that auditory temporal information and visual temporal information do not mutually interfere in reference memory.