| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 應用藝術研究所 === 92 === Vision and audition are the two major modalities we use to receive outside messages. There is evidence indicating that vision and audition do not function independently. A better understanding of the interaction between these two senses is of great value to a designer. The focus of our study is the effect of audio rhythm on visual attention. We hypothesize that if the visual and the auditory stimuli are synchronized, viewer can be cued by the auditory rhythm and would pay more attention to the synchronized visual event. The aim of this study is to test this hypothesis.
We used rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) as a means to probe subjects’ visual spatial attention on a given spot of the screen. Two RSVP streams of different rhythms were presented to the viewer on each trial. One of the RSVP stream is synchronized with an auditory stimulus while another is not. If the viewer’s attention can be guided by the auditory rhythm, one would predict that the performance in the synchronized RSVP be better than that in another stream.
The results show that: 1. The auditory rhythm, while being task-irrelevant by itself, does cue subjects’ attention to the synchronized visual event. 2. The power of cueing visual events is critically dependent upon the acoustic properties of the auditory stimulus. 3. Some rhythms are more potent than others in binding visual and auditory events. 4. As most viewers were not aware that one of the RSVP streams was synchronized to the auditory event, we believe the enhancement effect by synchronization occurs at an early, preconscious level.
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