Attention and Decision Factors in Bimodal Signal Processing.
Abstract
The research to be described is directed toward answering two related questions: (1) how is information from multiple sensory sources combined to reach a binary 'yes-no' detection decision, and (2) does dividing attention among multiple sources cause losses of information. During this first year, efforts have focused on examining information integration and attention allocation with simple unimodal stimuli. Three experiments were run to investigate the first question when sources of information were defined as different hypothetical frequency channels and the stimuli were simple tones. Data from these studies indicated that separate decisions are formed about the presence of a tone in each channel, and these independent decisions are then pooled to arrive at a 'yes-no' response. This independent decisions model was supported both for widely separated tones and for tones differing in frequency by only one tenth of a critical band (e.g., 700 and 715 Hz). With regard to the second research question, a pair of experiments showed that losses of information apparently do not result when the number of hypothetical frequency channels is increased from two to four. This result suggests that attention to pitch is not capacity limited.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 1982
- Accession Number
- ADA119181
Entities
People
- Marilyn L. Shaw
Organizations
- Rutgers University–New Brunswick