Van Damme Stefaan, Crombez Geert, Spence Charles
Department of Experimental-Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000 Ghent, Belgium.
Exp Brain Res. 2009 Feb;193(2):197-204. doi: 10.1007/s00221-008-1608-1. Epub 2008 Oct 25.
The simultaneous presentation of a visual and an auditory stimulus can lead to a decrease in people's ability to perceive or respond to the auditory stimulus. In this study, we investigate the effect that threat has upon this phenomenon, known as the Colavita visual dominance effect. Participants performed two blocks of trials containing 40% visual, 40% auditory, and 20% bimodal trials. The first block of trials was identical for all participants, while in the second block, either the visual stimulus (visual threat condition), auditory stimulus (auditory threat condition), or neither stimulus (control condition) was fear-conditioned using aversive electrocutaneous stimuli. We predicted that, when compared with the control condition, this visual dominance effect would increase in the visual threat condition and decrease in the auditory threat condition. This hypothesis was partially supported by the data. In particular, the results showed that the fear-conditioning of the visual stimulus significantly increased the visual dominance effect relative to the control condition. However, the fear-conditioning of the auditory stimulus did not reduce the visual dominance effect but instead increased it slightly. These findings are discussed in terms of the role that attention and arousal play in the dominance of vision over audition.
视觉刺激和听觉刺激同时呈现会导致人们感知或响应听觉刺激的能力下降。在本研究中，我们调查了威胁对这种被称为科拉维塔视觉优势效应的现象的影响。参与者进行了两个试验组，其中视觉试验占40%、听觉试验占40%、双峰试验占20%。所有参与者的第一组试验都是相同的，而在第二组试验中，使用厌恶性皮肤电刺激对视觉刺激（视觉威胁条件）、听觉刺激（听觉威胁条件）或两种刺激都不进行（对照条件）进行恐惧条件反射。我们预测，与对照条件相比，这种视觉优势效应在视觉威胁条件下会增强，而在听觉威胁条件下会减弱。该假设得到了数据的部分支持。具体而言，结果表明，相对于对照条件，视觉刺激的恐惧条件反射显著增强了视觉优势效应。然而，听觉刺激的恐惧条件反射并没有降低视觉优势效应，反而略有增强。我们从注意力和唤醒在视觉对听觉的优势中所起的作用方面对这些发现进行了讨论。
