When What You Hear Influences When You See: Listening to an Auditory Rhythm Influences the Temporal Allocation of Visual Attention

摘要

The three experiments reported here demonstrated a cross-modal influence of an auditory rhythm on the temporal allocation of visual attention. In Experiment I, participants moved their eyes to a test dot with a temporal onset that was either synchronous or asynchronous with a preceding auditory rhythm. Saccadic latencies were faster for the synchronous condition than for the asynchronous conditions. In Experiment 2, the effect was replicated in a condition in which the auditory context stopped prior to the onset of the test dot, and the effect did not occur in a condition in which auditory tones were presented at irregular intervals. Experiment 3 replicated the effect using an accuracy measure within a nontimed visual task.Together, the experiments' findings support a general entrainment perspective on attention to events over time.