Date of Award

5-2017

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

College/School

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Department/Program

Psychology

Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair

Yoav Arieh

Committee Member

Debra Zellner

Committee Member

Josh Sandry

Abstract

Past research has indicated different models of combination may be activated when an individual perceives information as coming from the same source (Treisman, 1998; Ernst, 2004). Moreover, auditory perception research has indicated that a temporal window of integration exists around sounds that are separated by 160 ms or less (Yabe et al, 1998). The current experiment investigated if predictions from an independent decisions model would hold when multiple sounds were played with a gap more or less than 150 ms. We hypothesized that when the gap between cues was 150 ms, the independent decisions model prediction would differ significantly from the observed data, but that a significant difference would not be found when comparing a much larger time gap condition data against the independent decisions model prediction. 36 participants completed three blocks where they were provided with either one or two auditory cues and asked to lateralize the cues to either the left or right side. Blocks differed in terms of number of cues (one or two) and time gap between the cues in the multiple cue blocks (150 ms or 500 ms). Results indicated that the 150 ms gap and 500 ms gap condition both significantly differed from the predictions of the independent decisions model. This finding implies that multiple auditory cues will be integrated in a localization task even with a gap between the cues up to 500 ms.

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