The Colavita Effect Revisited: Sensory Dominance with Complex Stimuli

Scott Sinnett, Dept. de Psicologia Bàsica - Facultat de Psicologia and Parc Cientific de Barcelona, Universitat de Barcelona

Abstract
One of the most striking, although perhaps less well understood, demonstrations of visual sensory dominance was reported by Colavita (1974). In Colavita’s original study, participants performed a speeded detection task on both unimodal (auditory or visual) targets and on occasional bimodal (audiovisual) targets for which no particular instruction had been given. Reaction times (RT) were faster for unimodal auditory targets than unimodal visual targets, but on the majority of bimodal targets, participants only responded to the visual stimulus (as if the occurrence of the light somehow ‘extinguished’ the participant’s perception of the sound). We explored this visual dominance effect with visual, auditory and audiovisual targets interspersed amongst streams of drawings and sounds (instead of single beeps and flashes). We replicated the Colavita effect (e.g., faster unimodal auditory responses, yet more errors consisting of visual responses on bimodal trials), and also demonstrated that the effect can be modulated by focusing attention to a particular sensory modality. These results will be discussed in relation to current theories of sensory dominance.

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