Sensory interaction: perception of loudness during visual stimulation.

Abstract

Eight subjects engaged in an alternate binaural loudness balance (ABLB) task utilizing the method of adjustment to explore the perception of loudness of a 300-msec-duration 1-kHz auditory stimulus at 20 dB and 50 dB SL's. Conditions utilized were no visual stimulation during ABLB, visual stimulation in synchrony with the standard auditory stimulus during ABLB, and visual stimulation in sychrony with the comparison auditory stimulus during ABLB. The visual stimulus was a short-duration stroboscopic light flash. The data indicated that sensory interaction in terms of visual facilitation of auditory loudness does occur and is more apparent at higher rather than lower SL's. The comparison stimulus was adjusted to a higher SL when the visual stimulus was associated with the standard auditory stimulus than when the visual stimulus was associated with the comparison auditory stimulus. The magnitude of this statistically significant difference was approximately 7 dB and implies that information presented to the visual sensory modality can affect the perception of the magnitude of information presented to the auditory sensory modality.