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Visual events modulated by sound in repetition blindness

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Abstract

Repetition blindness (RB; Kanwisher, 1987) is the term used to describe people’s failure to detect or report an item that is repeated in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) stream. Although RB is, by definition, a visual deficit, whether it is affected by an auditory signal remains unknown. In the present study, we added two sounds before, simultaneous with, or after the onset of the two critical visual items during RSVP to examine the effect of sound on RB. The results show that the addition of the sounds effectively reduced RB when they appeared at, or around, the critical items. These results indicate that it is easier to perceive an event containing multisensory information than unisensory ones. Possible mechanisms of how visual and auditory information interact are discussed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Rd., 106, Taipei, Taiwan

    Yi-Chuan Chen & Su-Ling Yeh

Authors
  1. Yi-Chuan Chen
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  2. Su-Ling Yeh
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Correspondence to Yi-Chuan Chen.

Additional information

This research was supported by Grants NSC93-2413-H-002-017 and NSC94-2752-H-002-008-PAE from the National Science Council of Taiwan.

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Chen, YC., Yeh, SL. Visual events modulated by sound in repetition blindness. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 15, 404–408 (2008). https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.15.2.404

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.15.2.404

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