title: Melodic sound enhances visual awareness of congruent musical notes, but only if you can read music.
abstract: Predictive influences of auditory information on resolution of visual competition were investigated using music, whose visual symbolic notation is familiar only to those with musical training. Results from two experiments using different experimental paradigms revealed that melodic congruence between what is seen and what is heard impacts perceptual dynamics during binocular rivalry. This bisensory interaction was observed only when the musical score was perceptually dominant, not when it was suppressed from awareness, and it was observed only in people who could read music. Results from two ancillary experiments showed that this effect of congruence cannot be explained by differential patterns of eye movements or by differential response sluggishness associated with congruent score/melody combinations. Taken together, these results demonstrate robust audiovisual interaction based on high-level, symbolic representations and its predictive influence on perceptual dynamics during binocular rivalry.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Korea University, Seoul 136701, Korea;
authors.forename: Minyoung
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological Sciences, Vanderbilt Vision Research Center, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37240; Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul 151742, Korea randolph.blake@vanderbilt.edu chaikim@korea.ac.kr.
authors.forename: Randolph
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Blake
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Korea University, Seoul 136701, Korea; randolph.blake@vanderbilt.edu chaikim@korea.ac.kr.
authors.forename: Sujin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Korea University, Seoul 136701, Korea; randolph.blake@vanderbilt.edu chaikim@korea.ac.kr.
authors.forename: Chai-Youn
authors.initials: CY
authors.lastname: Kim
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001364:Awareness / Q000502:physiology*; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009146:Music; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D013016:Sound; D015348:Vision, Binocular / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: audio-visual congruence; binocular rivalry; multisensory interaction; music; visual awareness