Fundamental differences in change detection between vision and audition.
We compared auditory change detection to visual change detection using closely matched stimuli and tasks in the two modalities. On each trial, participants were presented with a test stimulus consisting of ten elements: pure tones with various frequencies for audition, or dots with various spatial positions for vision. The test stimulus was preceded or followed by a probe stimulus consisting of a single element, and two change-detection tasks were performed. In the "present/absent" task, the probe either matched one randomly selected element of the test stimulus or none of them; participants reported present or absent. In the "direction-judgment" task, the probe was always slightly shifted relative to one randomly selected element of the test stimulus; participants reported the direction of the shift. Whereas visual performance was systematically better in the present/absent task than in the direction-judgment task, the opposite was true for auditory performance. Moreover, whereas visual performance was strongly dependent on selective attention and on the time interval separating the probe from the test stimulus, this was not the case for auditory performance. Our results show that small auditory changes can be detected automatically across relatively long temporal gaps, using an implicit memory system that seems to have no similar counterpart in the visual domain.
Demany
Laurent
L
Laboratoire Mouvement, Adaptation, Cognition (UMR CNRS 5227), Université de Bordeaux, 146 rue Leo Saignat, 33076, Bordeaux, France. laurent.demany@u-bordeaux2.fr
Semal
Catherine
C
Cazalets
Jean-René
JR
Pressnitzer
Daniel
D
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006309:Hearing / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D014785:Vision, Ocular / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*