Using several modalities to perceive one temporal pattern

In two experiments, subjects identified temporal patterns. The patterns consisted of eight dichotomous (left-right) elements, e.g. LLRRLRLR, continuously repeated until the subject was able to identify the pattern. In Experiment 1, one pattern was presented either separately in the auditory, tactual, or visual modalities or one pattern was presented simultaneously in two modalities (compatible presentation). In Experiment 2, one pattern was simultaneously presented in two modalities, but the pattern was presented in one modality and the complement of the pattern (the complement of LLRRLRLR is RRLLRLRL) was presented in the second modality. Therefore, opposite spatial elements appeared in each modality (incompatible presentation).

The results indicated that the rate of pattern identification was the same for compatible and incompatible presentation. These methods produce better performance than individual modality presentation at fast presentation rates (2 elements/sec. and faster) although individual modality presentation was better at slower rates. This suggests that when a pattern is presented in two modalities, the pattern in each modality is integrated, not the particular spatial elements in each modality. Furthermore, the rate of pattern identification using individual modalities did not predict the difficulty using pairs of modalities. These results demonstrate the Gestalt nature of pattern perception; the pattern is perceptually salient and the performance of pairs of modalities depends on the inherent properties of the individual modalities.