4th Annual Meeting of the International Multisensory Research Forum
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Lana Trick

Patterns of selective interference for a visual and manual task
Single Paper Presentation

Lana Trick
Dept. of Psychology, University of Guelph

     Abstract ID Number: 58
     Full text: Not available
     Last modified: May 13, 2003

Abstract
When investigating multi-sensory processes, one important issue is the extent to which various sensory and motor processes rely on the same mechanism and thus interfere with one another. In this study, the primary visual task was visual spatial enumeration – counting dots laid out in different positions in space. It has been argued that subitizing, the effortless rapid (40-100 ms/item) process of enumerating 1-4 items, is related to multiple target tracking. As such, it would be expected to require the same spatial reference tokens used in manual tasks such as touching specific objects (FINSTS, see Trick & Pylyshyn, 1994). In contrast, enumerating 5 or more items requires an effortful slow (200-350 ms/item) process that involves moving an attentional focus systematically through the image one area at a time and augmenting a memory counter as items are encountered. In this study, observers enumerated while either listening to a metronome, saying a nonsense syllable to the beat of the metronome, or tapping a specific key on a keyboard to the beat of a metronome. Differential patterns of interference were found depending on the number of items. Tapping interfered most with enumerating 1-4 while pronouncing a syllable interfered most with enumerating 5 or more.


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