The underlying mechanism in Colavita effect

Abstract

Colavita effect is a robust visual dominance effect which described a tendency of responding to visual modality while ignoring the auditory modality when the participants were presented with a bimodal audio-visual stimulus Several explanations of its cause have been provided and are still in debate We investigated Spence’s (2009) assumption of the mechanism behind Colavita effect and the Welch and Warren’s (1980) modality appropriateness hypothesis as an explanation of the Colavita effect We intended to manipulate the accessory asymmetry of visual and auditory targets with target polarity As darker targets should be proceeded faster than brighter targets we expected a larger Colavita effect when using darker visual targets We also used a three-key design to clarify the influence of accessory asymmetry in the assumed process of forming the Colavita effect With adding absent trials we tested the plausibility of modality appropriateness hypothesis Our results support Spence’s idea of accessory asymmetry We found it applicable not only in visual dominance results but also in auditory dominance and "no-dominance" results Moreover our finding also supports the modality appropriateness hypothesis by which we successfully reversed the Colavita effect into auditory dominance when absent trials were added

Date of Award	2016 Sept 10
Original language	English
Supervisor	Pi-Chun Huang (Supervisor)