Auditory thresholds during stroboscopic visual stimulation.

Abstract

Twelve experienced subjects participated in a Békésy-type tracking procedure and obtained their thresholds for a 25- and a 300-msec duration 1-kHz pulsing auditory stimulus in the absence and presence of time-locked stroboscopic visual stimulation. Six subjects obtained their thresholds in quiet, and the remainder tracked threshold in the presence of white noise. The data indicated that psychophysical sensory interaction between the auditory and visual systems does not occur when auditory thresholds are assessed in the presence of visual stimulation. Auditory thresholds were neither facilitated nor inhibited. These generalizations applied whether thresholds were obtained for short- or long-duration auditory stimuli in quiet or in the presence of a masking stimulus. Similar results were obtained for attenuator pen excursion size. A hypothesis is presented suggesting that the potential for psychophysical sensory interaction to occur between the visual and auditory modalities may increase as the magnitudes of sensory stimuli presented to them increase.