Auditory Warning Signal Research Articles

Facilitation intersensorielle, erreurs et corrections dans une tâche de poursuite discontinue

Summary The phenomenon of « inter-sensory facilitation » was studied in a situation of discontinuons visuo-manual pursuit with a binary choice between two directions of response. The effect of an auditory warning signal was to significantly shorten reaction times when the interval between warning and stimulus was between 0 and 240 ms. In a control situation, this interval was 4 000 ms. The analysis of the correct and incorrect responses and of their latency allowed us to conclude that the warning signal influences the specific response processes as well as having a non-specific facilitatory effect. The hypothesis in which the warning signal replaces a stimulus had however to be rejected. An examination of the length of time and the amplitude of the incorrect responses showed that the error correction does not require any visual or proprioceptive feedback. It is possible to daim that this type of correction depends on a more detailed analysis of the sensory data which initially triggered the incorrect response.

The time-course of preparation: Confirmatory results with visual and auditory warning signals

In a previous experiment (B ERTELSON, 1967) an auditory warning signal occurring in a high time-uncertainty situation produced an acceleration of the choice reaction to a visual stimulus which followed it by a predictable interval. The experiment has been replicated with the same click as warning signal in one condition, and with a visual signal, a flash, in the other. The facilitating effects of the flash lag behind those of the click, but they are observed for all positive intervals and are significant from 70 msec onwards. The previous conclusion that a warning signal can be used as a time cue without starting a refractory period was thus not restricted to the particular signal which had been used so far. A consequence is that the current tendency to take the situation of a reaction stimulus prefaced by a no-reaction stimulus as the standard condition in which to study refractoriness should be considered with caution.