Attention and visual dominance: A chronometric analysis.

Abstract

Three chronometric experiments, each comparing vision and kinesthesis, were conducted to study visual dominance. The time required to switch attention from vision and from kinesthesis was equal, while switching to kinesthesis was faster than switching to vision (Experiment 1). Responses to a combined visual-kinesthetic stimulus were slower than responses to a kinesthetic stimulus alone when the subject was expecting the bimodal stimulus. The visual dominance effect was shown to depend on the subject knowing the modality of the stimulus in advance (Experiment 2). When subjects were instructed to attend one modality they had equal difficulty with conflicting visual and kinesthetic information (Experiment 3). These findings suggest that visual dominance results from a bias to attend vision when that modality seems adequate for the task. Te bias to attend vision may develop to overcome a deficiency in visual alerting.