Abstract
Language represents a system in which distinct sensory-specific inputs converge upon a highly overlearned common correspondence. This paper examines the influence of unattended visual and auditory words upon naming latencies. Subjects were asked to name a single auditory or visual target word that occurred at the end of a meaningful aurally presented phrase. Experiment 1 indicated redundancy gains when the same word appeared on both modalities. The redundancy gains were of about the same size for both modalities. In Experiment 1 interference was found when the unattended message was visual. Experiment 2 showed that the interference effects found in the first experiment resulted mainly from a violation of the modality-specific expectancies induced by the auditory priming phrase rather than from the unattended visual item. This result suggests that expectancies created by the auditory phrase are modality specific.
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These studies were begun while the second author was Visiting Professor of Psychology at Delhi University. The writing of this report was supported by NSF Grant BNS76-18907-A02.
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Sen, A., Posner, M.I. The effect of unattended visual and auditory words on cross-modal naming. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 13, 405–408 (1979). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03336908
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03336908