Abstract
Temporal yoking has been shown to enhance performance in dual auditory-visual tasks (Jiang & Swallow, 2014). Here we investigate the relative timing of a picture target in an RSVP sequence and the spoken name of the target. Prior studies (Potter, Wyble, Hagmann, & McCourt, 2014) showed that presenting a written target name 900 ms before the visual sequence led to more accurate detection than when the name appeared 200 ms after the sequence. By using a spoken target name in the present study, we avoided visual interference between the name and the visual sequence, enabling us to investigate temporal yoking in greater detail. The target, which appeared on 50% of the trials, was one of a stream of 6 pictures presented for 53 ms per picture; all pictures were new to the participants. The spoken name of the target began at four possible times, relative to the onset of the 320 ms picture sequence: 1000 or 500 ms before the sequence, at the beginning, or 500 ms after the beginning of the sequence (180 ms after the sequence ended). Strikingly, performance remained well above chance in each temporal condition, although it dropped significantly the later the onset of the spoken target. While advance conceptual information can enhance picture selection, matching can still occur when the target information is simultaneous with or immediately follows the sequence.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015