Investigations of Acoustic Effects Upon Visual Signal Detection

摘要

Several patterns of aural white noise of moderate intensity were presented in 4 forced-choice experiments to investigate acoustic influence upon visual detection. When noise was present, but not continuous, the temporal properties of its bursts or interruptions bore a regular relation to the observation intervals involved in the visual task. Detection rates were highest when bursts of noise coincided with observation intervals. Rates were somewhat higher when there were interruptions at observation intervals than when noise was continuous. Acoustic facilitation was reduced to a (statistically) nonsignificant level when the visual signal was made spatially coincident with one of four light flashes. Practice effects were present over the full span of the longest of these experiments, but not obvious in each of the experiments. (Author)