Physiology Commons^™

Cross-Modal Attention Influences Auditory Contrast Sensitivity: Decreasing Visual Load Improves Auditory Thresholds For Amplitude- And Frequency-Modulated Sounds, Vivian M. Ciaramitaro, Hiu Mei Chow, Luke G. Eglington

Dartmouth Scholarship

We used a cross-modal dual task to examine how changing visual-task demands influenced auditory processing, namely auditory thresholds for amplitude- and frequency-modulated sounds. Observers had to attend to two consecutive intervals of sounds and report which interval contained the auditory stimulus that was modulated in amplitude (Experiment 1) or frequency (Experiment 2). During auditory-stimulus presentation, observers simultaneously attended to a rapid sequential visual presentation—two consecutive intervals of streams of visual letters—and had to report which interval contained a particular color (low load, demanding less attentional resources) or, in separate blocks of trials, which interval contained more of a target letter …