Abstract
Rutgers-The State University, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903 Is the quality of information obtained from simple auditory and visual signals diminished when both modalities must be attended to simultaneously? This question was investigated in an experiment in which subjects made forced-choice judgments of the location of simple light and tone signals presented in focused- and divided-attention conditions. The data are compared with the predictions of a model that describes the largest performance decrement to be expected in the divided-attention condition on the basis of nonattentional factors. The results of this comparison suggest that the difference in performance between focused- and dividedattention conditions is attributable solely to the increased opportunity to confuse signal with noise as the number of modalities is increased. Thus, there appears to be no evidence that dividing attention between modalities affects the quality of the stimulus representations of individual light and tone signals.
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Shaw, M. L.Attending to multiple sources of information: II. The effects of selectivity and uncertainty on performance. Manuscript in preparation.
Shaw, M. L., & Mulligan, R. M.Attention and set size effects in visual search. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Swensson, R. G., & Judy, P. F,Detection and location of noisy visual targets. Paper presented at the 21st annual meeting of the Psychonomic Society, St. Louis, November 1980.
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This research was supported by NSF Grant BNS 79-24885 to
This research was supported by NSF Grant BNS 79-24885 to
This research was supported by NSF Grant BNS 79-24885 to
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Mulligan, R.M., Shaw, M.L. Attending to simple auditory and visual signals. Perception & Psychophysics 30, 447–454 (1981). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03204840
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03204840