Comparative analysis of reactions to visual and auditory stimuli in research on EEG evoked potentials

Functional Locus of Intensity Effects in Choice Reaction Time Tasks

Journal of Psychophysiology ◽

10.1027/0269-8803.23.3.126 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 23 (3) ◽

pp. 126-134 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Piotr Jaśkowski ◽

Izabela Szumska ◽

Edyta Sasin

Keyword(s):

Reaction Time ◽

Evoked Potentials ◽

Response Selection ◽

Visual Stimuli ◽

Reaction Times ◽

Auditory Stimuli ◽

Response Choice ◽

Selection Processes ◽

Functional Locus ◽

Readiness Potentials

Long reaction times (RT) paradoxically occur with extremely loud auditory stimuli ( Van der Molen & Keuss, 1979 , 1981 ) or with ultrabright and large visual stimuli ( Jaśkowski & Włodarczyk, 2006 ) when the task requires a response choice. Van der Molen and Keuss (1981 ) hypothesized that this effect results from an arousal-driven elongation of response-selection processes. We tested this hypothesis using visual stimuli and chronopsychophysiological markers. The results showed that the latency of both early (P1 recorded at Oz) and late (P300) evoked potentials decreased monotonically with intensity. In contrast, the latency of stimulus-locked lateralized readiness potentials (LRP) abruptly increased for the most intense stimuli, thus mirroring the reaction time–intensity relationship. Response-locked LRPs revealed no dependency on intensity. These findings suggest that the processes responsible for the van der Molen-Keuss effect influence processing stages that are completed before the onset of LRP. The van der Molen-Keuss effect likely occurs later than those represented by early sensory potentials. This is in keeping with the hypothesis of van der Molen-Keuss.

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Spatial and Cross-Modal Attention Alter Responses to Unattended Sensory Information in Early Visual and Auditory Human Cortex

Journal of Neurophysiology ◽

10.1152/jn.00580.2007 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 98 (4) ◽

pp. 2399-2413 ◽

Cited By ~ 35

Author(s):

Vivian M. Ciaramitaro ◽

Giedrius T. Buračas ◽

Geoffrey M. Boynton

Keyword(s):

Spatial Attention ◽

Auditory Stimulus ◽

Visual Stimulus ◽

Visual Information ◽

Visual Stimuli ◽

Sensory Information ◽

Visual Area ◽

Auditory Stimuli ◽

Auditory Information ◽

Brain Responses

Attending to a visual or auditory stimulus often requires irrelevant information to be filtered out, both within the modality attended and in other modalities. For example, attentively listening to a phone conversation can diminish our ability to detect visual events. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine brain responses to visual and auditory stimuli while subjects attended visual or auditory information. Although early cortical areas are traditionally considered unimodal, we found that brain responses to the same ignored information depended on the modality attended. In early visual area V1, responses to ignored visual stimuli were weaker when attending to another visual stimulus, compared with attending to an auditory stimulus. The opposite was true in more central visual area MT+, where responses to ignored visual stimuli were weaker when attending to an auditory stimulus. Furthermore, fMRI responses to the same ignored visual information depended on the location of the auditory stimulus, with stronger responses when the attended auditory stimulus shared the same side of space as the ignored visual stimulus. In early auditory cortex, responses to ignored auditory stimuli were weaker when attending a visual stimulus. A simple parameterization of our data can describe the effects of redirecting attention across space within the same modality (spatial attention) or across modalities (cross-modal attention), and the influence of spatial attention across modalities (cross-modal spatial attention). Our results suggest that the representation of unattended information depends on whether attention is directed to another stimulus in the same modality or the same region of space.

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Detection performance for short visual stimuli depends on the duration of co-occuring auditory stimuli

Seeing and Perceiving ◽

10.1163/187847612x646479 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 25 (0) ◽

pp. 24

Author(s):

Roberto Cecere ◽

Benjamin De Haas ◽

Harriett Cullen ◽

Jon Driver ◽

Vincenzo Romei

Keyword(s):

Visual Perception ◽

Auditory Stimulus ◽

Visual Stimulus ◽

Visual Detection ◽

Visual Stimuli ◽

Detection Performance ◽

Detection Sensitivity ◽

Auditory Stimuli ◽

Sound Duration ◽

Perceived Duration

There is converging evidence that the duration of an auditory event can affect the perceived duration of a co-occurring visual event. When a brief visual stimulus is accompanied by a longer auditory stimulus, the perceived visual duration stretches. If this reflects a genuine sustain of visual stimulus perception, it should result in enhanced perception of non-temporal visual stimulus qualities. To test this hypothesis, in a temporal two-alternative forced choice task, 28 participants were asked to indicate whether a short (∼24 ms), peri-threshold, visual stimulus was presented in the first or in the second of two consecutive displays. Each display was accompanied by a sound of equal or longer duration (36, 48, 60, 72, 84, 96, 190 ms) than the visual stimulus. As a control condition, visual stimuli of different durations (matching auditory stimulus durations) were presented alone. We predicted that visual detection can improve as a function of sound duration. Moreover, if the expected cross-modal effect reflects sustained visual perception it should positively correlate with the improvement observed for genuinely longer visual stimuli. Results showed that detection sensitivity (d′) for the 24 ms visual stimulus was significantly enhanced when paired with longer auditory stimuli ranging from 60 to 96 ms duration. The visual detection performance dropped to baseline levels with 190 ms sounds. Crucially, the enhancement for auditory durations 60–96 ms significantly correlates with the d′ enhancement for visual stimuli lasting 60–96 ms in the control condition. We conclude that the duration of co-occurring auditory stimuli not only influences the perceived duration of visual stimuli but reflects a genuine sustain in visual perception.

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Reliability of an Attention-Assessing Technique

Perceptual and Motor Skills ◽

10.2466/pms.1984.59.1.212 ◽

1984 ◽

Vol 59 (1) ◽

pp. 212-214

Author(s):

H. W. Craver

Keyword(s):

Auditory Stimulus ◽

Visual Stimulus ◽

Experimental Situation ◽

Auditory Stimuli ◽

Self Monitoring ◽

Monitoring Techniques ◽

Self Reports

The reliability of an attention-focusing technique was assessed for 12 subjects over 4 sessions. Subjects' thought intrusions were counted while they were focusing on either visual or auditory stimuli. Digital temperatures were recorded and an experimental-situation questionnaire was administered. This technique provides extremely reliable self-reports across the sessions. The total number of intrusions was higher for the auditory stimulus than for the visual stimulus. The study's relevance to assessing self-monitoring techniques such as meditation is discussed.

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Some Factors Affecting Reaction Times to Auditory Stimuli in Mental Patients

Journal of Mental Science ◽

10.1192/bjp.100.419.462 ◽

1954 ◽

Vol 100 (419) ◽

pp. 462-477 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

K. R. L. Hall ◽

E. Stride

Keyword(s):

Reaction Time ◽

Visual Perception ◽

Visual Stimuli ◽

Reaction Times ◽

Auditory Stimuli ◽

Factors Affecting ◽

Mental Patients ◽

Personal Equation ◽

Work Up

A number of studies on reaction time (R.T.) latency to visual and auditory stimuli in psychotic patients has been reported since the first investigations on the personal equation were carried out. The general trends from the work up to 1943 are well summarized by Hunt (1944), while Granger's (1953) review of “Personality and visual perception” contains a summary of the studies on R.T. to visual stimuli.

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Summation: Further Assessment of a Configural Theory

The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section B ◽

10.1080/02724990143000171 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 55 (1b) ◽

pp. 61-73 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

John M. Pearce ◽

David N. George ◽

Aydan Aydin

Keyword(s):

Pavlovian Conditioning ◽

Auditory Stimulus ◽

Visual Stimulus ◽

Auditory Stimuli ◽

Configural Theory

Rats received Pavlovian conditioning in which food was signalled by a visual stimulus, A+, an auditory stimulus, B+, and a compound composed of different visual and auditory stimuli, CD+. Test trials were then given with the compound AB. Experiments 1 and 2A revealed stronger responding during AB than during CD. In Experiment 2B, there was no evidence of a summation of responding during AB when A+ B+ training was conducted in the absence of CD+ trials. A further failure to observe abnormally strong responding during ABwas found in Experiment 3 for which the training trials with A+ B+ CD+ were accompanied by trials in which C and D were separately paired with food. The results are explained in terms of a configural theory of conditioning, which assumes that responding during a compound is determined by generalization from its components, as well as from other compounds to which it is similar.

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Tactile Capture of Auditory Localization Is Modulated by Hand Posture

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169/a000032 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 57 (4) ◽

pp. 267-274 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Patrick Bruns ◽

Brigitte Röder

Keyword(s):

Coordinate System ◽

Auditory Stimulus ◽

Visual Stimulus ◽

Tactile Stimulus ◽

Auditory Localization ◽

Auditory Stimuli ◽

Hand Posture ◽

Visual Events ◽

Tactile Stimuli ◽

Left And Right

It is well known that spatial discrepancies between synchronized auditory and visual events can lead to mislocalizations of the auditory stimulus toward the visual stimulus, the so-called ventriloquism effect. Recently, a similar effect of touch on audition has been reported. This study investigated whether this audio-tactile ventriloquism effect depends on hand posture. Participants reported the perceived location of brief auditory stimuli that were presented from left, right, and center locations, either alone or with concurrent tactile stimuli to the fingertips situated at the left and right sides of the speaker array. Compared to unimodal presentations, auditory localization was biased toward the side of the concurrent tactile stimulus in the bimodal trials. This effect was reduced but still significant when participants adopted a crossed-hands posture. In this condition a partial (incomplete) localization bias was observed only for large audio-tactile spatial discrepancies. However, localization was still shifted toward the external location of the tactile stimulus, and not toward the side of the anatomical hand that was stimulated. These results substantiate recent evidence for the existence of an audio-tactile ventriloquism effect and extend these findings by demonstrating that this illusion operates predominantly in an external coordinate system.

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The size of the ventriloquist effect is modulated by emotional valence

Seeing and Perceiving ◽

10.1163/187847612x647964 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 25 (0) ◽

pp. 166

Author(s):

Mario Maiworm ◽

Marina Bellantoni ◽

Charles Spence ◽

Brigitte Roeder

Keyword(s):

Auditory Stimulus ◽

Visual Stimulus ◽

Emotional Valence ◽

The Other ◽

Auditory Stimuli ◽

Control Group ◽

Pure Tones ◽

Emotional System ◽

Ventriloquist Effect ◽

Light Flashes

It is currently unknown to what extent the integration of inputs from different modalities are subject to the influence of attention, emotion, and/or motivation. The ventriloquist effect is widely assumed to be an automatic, crossmodal phenomenon, normally shifting the perceived location of an auditory stimulus toward a concurrently-presented visual stimulus. The present study examined whether audiovisual binding, as indicated by the magnitude of the ventriloquist effect, is influenced by threatening auditory stimuli presented prior to the ventriloquist experiment. Syllables spoken in a fearful voice were presented from one of eight loudspeakers while syllables spoken in a neutral voice were presented from the other seven locations. Subsequently, participants had to localize pure tones while trying to ignore concurrent light flashes (both of which were emotionally neutral). A reliable ventriloquist effect was observed. The emotional stimulus manipulation resulted in a reduced ventriloquist effect in both hemifields, as compared to a control group exposed to a similar attention-capturing but non-emotional manipulation. These results suggest that the emotional system is capable of influencing crossmodal binding processes which have heretofore been considered as being automatic.

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