Semantic congruency and the Colavita visual dominance effect

Participants presented with auditory, visual, or bimodal audiovisual stimuli in a speeded discrimination task, fail to respond to the auditory component of bimodal targets significantly more often than to the visual component, a phenomenon known as the Colavita visual dominance effect. Given that sp...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Experimental brain research 2008-02, Vol.184 (4), p.533-546
Main Authors: Koppen, Camille, Alsius, Agnès, Spence, Charles
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic Stimulation
Adolescent
Adult
Biological and medical sciences
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Biomedicine
Discrimination (Psychology) - physiology
Eye and associated structures. Visual pathways and centers. Vision
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Male
Medical sciences
Neurology
Neurosciences
Ophthalmology
Perceptual Masking - physiology
Photic Stimulation
Research Article
Semantics
Speech Perception - physiology
Vertebrates: nervous system and sense organs
Vision disorders
Visual Perception - physiology
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Summary:Participants presented with auditory, visual, or bimodal audiovisual stimuli in a speeded discrimination task, fail to respond to the auditory component of bimodal targets significantly more often than to the visual component, a phenomenon known as the Colavita visual dominance effect. Given that spatial and temporal factors have recently been shown to modulate the Colavita effect, the aim of the present study, was to investigate whether semantic congruency also modulates the effect. In the three experiments reported here, participants were presented with a version of the Colavita task in which the stimulus congruency between the auditory and visual components of the bimodal targets was manipulated. That is, the auditory and visual stimuli could refer to the same or different object (in Experiments 1 and 2) or audiovisual speech event (Experiment 3). Surprisingly, semantic/stimulus congruency had no effect on the magnitude of the Colavita effect in any of the experiments, although it exerted a significant effect on certain other aspects of participants’ performance. This finding contrasts with the results of other recent studies showing that semantic/stimulus congruency can affect certain multisensory interactions.
ISSN:0014-4819
1432-1106
DOI:10.1007/s00221-007-1120-z