Recent interest in the development of visual and auditory communication systems has led to a consideration of the relative efficiency of vision and audition under conditions of simultaneous stimulation. It has often been shown that a combined visual and auditory presentation of the same material results in better comprehension than the presentation of either auditory or visual material alone (2). Very little is known, however, about the relative performances of these two modalities when they are simultaneously stimulated by conflicting material. Recently, Mowbray (10) has shown that for combined tasks involving more than one level of difficulty, significant deterioration of performance, compared to that with nonsimultaneous presentation, caused by the conflicting nature of the material occurred with the easier of the tasks. No differential modality effects were detected. That is to say, deterioration of performance from nonsimul-
"The relative performance of vision and audition under conditions of simultaneous stimulation was investigated for rapid scanning tasks considered to exhibit 2 levels of difficulty." Ss were required to detect elements missing from alphabets and numeral sequences when such sequences were simultaneously presented visually and aurally. More errors of omission were committed with the alphabet sequences than with the numerals for nonsimultaneous operation, while significantly more auditory errors than visual errors were committed with the numeral sequences. With the alphabet sequences, no significant differences were found between visual and auditory errors of omission.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.