Wille Claudia, Ebersbach Mirjam
Department of Psychology, University of Kassel, 34127 Kassel, Germany.
Department of Psychology, University of Kassel, 34127 Kassel, Germany.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2016 Jan;141:23-33. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2015.07.015. Epub 2015 Aug 22.
When presented with auditory, visual, or bimodal audiovisual stimuli in a discrimination task, adults tend to ignore the auditory component in bimodal stimuli and respond to the visual component only (i.e., Colavita visual dominance effect). The same is true for older children, whereas young children are dominated by the auditory component of bimodal audiovisual stimuli. This suggests a change of sensory dominance during childhood. The aim of the current study was to investigate, in three experimental conditions, whether children and adults show sensory dominance when presented with complex semantic stimuli and whether this dominance can be modulated by stimulus characteristics such as semantic (in)congruency, frequency of bimodal trials, and color information. Semantic (in)congruency did not affect the magnitude of the auditory dominance effect in 6-year-olds or the visual dominance effect in adults, but it was a modulating factor of the visual dominance in 9-year-olds (Conditions 1 and 2). Furthermore, the absence of color information (Condition 3) did not affect auditory dominance in 6-year-olds and hardly affected visual dominance in adults, whereas the visual dominance in 9-year-olds disappeared. Our results suggest that (a) sensory dominance in children and adults is not restricted to simple lights and sounds, as used in previous research, but can be extended to semantically meaningful stimuli and that (b) sensory dominance is more robust in 6-year-olds and adults than in 9-year-olds, implying a transitional stage around this age.
在辨别任务中，当面对听觉、视觉或视听双峰刺激时，成年人往往会忽略双峰刺激中的听觉成分，仅对视觉成分做出反应（即科拉维塔视觉优势效应）。大龄儿童也是如此，而年幼儿童则受视听双峰刺激的听觉成分主导。这表明童年时期感觉优势会发生变化。本研究的目的是在三种实验条件下，探究儿童和成年人在面对复杂语义刺激时是否表现出感觉优势，以及这种优势是否会受到语义（不）一致性、双峰试验频率和颜色信息等刺激特征的调节。语义（不）一致性并未影响6岁儿童的听觉优势效应大小或成年人的视觉优势效应大小，但它是9岁儿童视觉优势的调节因素（条件1和2）。此外，没有颜色信息（条件3）并未影响6岁儿童的听觉优势，对成年人的视觉优势影响也很小，而9岁儿童的视觉优势则消失了。我们的研究结果表明：（a）儿童和成年人的感觉优势并不局限于先前研究中使用的简单灯光和声音，而是可以扩展到语义有意义的刺激；（b）6岁儿童和成年人的感觉优势比9岁儿童更强，这意味着在这个年龄左右存在一个过渡阶段。
