The influence of eye movements and illumination on auditory localization

On listening where we look: The fragility of a phenomenon

“…In an important critical review of the field, Mastroianni (1982) has observed that "the literature on intersensory facilitation is riddled with contradictory findings and with failures to replicate earlier findings." Since procedural differences can contribute to variability in results, close replications of previous procedures are needed in this field in order for the robustness of experimental findings to become firmly established.…”

“…These explanations differ largely in terms of the relative importance assigned to "visual" (information in the visual field) as opposed to "motor" (eye movement and position information) cues (see Mastroianni, 1982;Shelton & Searle, 1980). Warren's (1970;see also Platt & Warren, 1972) influential visual frame of reference theory states that a (freely viewed) textured visual field provides the information required to anchor spatial attention and hence auditory localization.…”

“…Since findings in the literature on the visual facilitation of auditory performance are notoriously unreliable (see Mastroianni, 1982), the robustness of results in this field must be firmly established before their real theoretical import can be assessed. In the present study, two experiments were performed in an attempt to replicate the Reisberg et al (1981) fmdings.…”

Fragmenting and integrating visuospatial working memory

“…The wealth of evidence showing that congenitally blind individuals are quite capable of representing spatial information refutes this obligatory dependence on visual experience (e.g., Golledge et al, 1996;Leonard & Newman, 1967;Passini, Delisle, Langlois, & Prouis, 1988;Passini, Proulx, & Rainville, 1990;Tinti, Adenzato, Tamietto, & Cornoldi, 2006). However, several lines of research appear to implicitly support a more moderate version of the hypothesis which gives special status to vision as the primary modality for spatial learning and memory (e.g., Attneave & Benson, 1969;Bertelson & Radeau, 1981;Mastroianni, 1982;Platt & Warren, 1972;Rock, 1966;Vecchi, Tinti, & Cornoldi, 2004;Warren, 1970).…”

A defense of the two-component model of visual facilitation in auditory localization

“…A paper published by Campbell Searle and myself (Shelton & Searle, 1980) has come under criticism in a recent article in this journal (Mastroianni, 1982). I would like to respond to some of the issues raised by those comments, and to examine the utility of the experiment Mastroianni conducted to resolve the apparent conflict.…”