Elsevier

Acta Psychologica

Volume 108, Issue 1, June 2001, Pages 21-33
Acta Psychologica

Directing spatial attention towards the illusory location of a ventriloquized sound

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0001-6918(00)00068-8Get rights and content

Abstract

In this study, we examined whether ventriloquism can rearrange external space on which spatial reflexive attention operates. The task was to judge the elevation (up vs down) of auditory targets delivered in the left or the right periphery, taking no account of side of presentation. Targets were preceded by either auditory, visual, or audiovisual cues to that side. Auditory, but not visual cues had an effect on the speed of auditory target discrimination. On the other hand, a ventriloquized cue, consisting of a tone in central location synchronized with a light flash in the periphery, facilitated responses to targets appearing on the same side as the flash. That effect presumably resulted from the attraction of the apparent location of the tone towards the flash, a well-known manifestation of ventriloquism. Ventriloquism thus can reorganize space in which reflexive attention operates.

Section snippets

Subjects

Nineteen subjects were recruited by advertisement to take part in this experiment. All were first year students from Tilburg University and they received course credits for their participation. Data of three subjects were discarded from the analysis because their performance in auditory elevation discrimination was below 80% correct. The remaining subjects, 13 females and 3 males, all had normal hearing and vision.

Apparatus and materials

All experiments were conducted in a dimly lit soundproof booth. Subjects were

Method

Nineteen new subjects took part in this experiment. One subject was unable to make the auditory up–down discrimination above 80% and his data were therefore removed from the analysis. Of the remaining subjects nine were females and nine males.

The apparatus, materials, and design were exactly the same as in Experiment 1, except that cues from the auditory condition were replaced by ventriloquist cues. A ventriloquist cue consisted of a lateral visual cue synchronized with a cue tone emitted from

Method

Twenty-six new subjects took part in this experiment. The apparatus, materials, and design were all as in Experiment 2. The same number of trials were run, but now evenly distributed across six SOAs (100, 200, 300, 400, 500, and 600 ms).

Results and discussion

The intersubject means of median RTs are shown in Table 3, separately for each modality of the cue and each SOA. In the overall ANOVA on the median RTs, there was a significant effect of SOA, F(5,125)=35.28,P<0.001 because responses were again slower at the

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Ministry of Scientific Research of the Belgian French-speaking Community (Concerted Research Action 96/01-2037) and by the Belgian National Fund for Collective Fundamental Research (Contract 2.45.39.95). We like to thank Esther IJpelaar for help in testing subjects.

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