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Abstract

Visual search — the ability to find targets amongst distractors — is a skill used daily in personal and professional settings, alike. As an attention-guided skill, however, visual search is susceptible to both visual distractions and distractions in other modalities such as audition. This susceptibility is particularly notable if the distraction is spatialized (i.e., appearing to come from a specific direction), though this remains untested for auditory interruptions. With this in mind, the present study sought to investigate how spatialized auditory distractors impact visual search performance as a function of task requirements. Employing a modified version of the additional singleton task (Theeuwes, 1991, 1992) with an interrupting auditory identification task, data were collected from Tufts University community members across two experiments. Experiment 1 asked participants to identify a visual target and where an interrupting sound originated, while Experiment 2 asked participants to complete the same visual search task and identify what an interrupting sound represents. A 2x2 within-subjects design was used to compare visual search performance at the experiment-level during distraction present and distraction absent conditions, with distractors appearing in both visual and auditory modalities. Additional analyses then compared visual search performance across experiments to assess the influence of spatialized (rather than non-spatialized) auditory interruptions. Results indicate that visual search trials with auditory distractors produced significantly longer response times and lower target identification accuracy than trials without auditory distractors, regardless of spatial properties. This finding, congruent with our expectations for this study, serves to highlight the potential for cross-modal distractions impacting visual search performance in scenarios like driving and travel safety where distractibility may contribute to risky, real-life situations.

Details

1010268
Title
The Impact of Spatialized Auditory Distraction on Visual Search Performance
Number of pages
75
Publication year
2025
Degree date
2025
School code
0234
Source
MAI 86/11(E), Masters Abstracts International
ISBN
9798315717270
Committee member
Dube, Blaire
University/institution
Tufts University
Department
Psychology
University location
United States -- Massachusetts
Degree
M.S.
Source type
Dissertation or Thesis
Language
English
Document type
Dissertation/Thesis
Dissertation/thesis number
31940419
ProQuest document ID
3206717917
Document URL
https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/impact-spatialized-auditory-distraction-on-visual/docview/3206717917/se-2?accountid=208611
Copyright
Database copyright ProQuest LLC; ProQuest does not claim copyright in the individual underlying works.
Database
ProQuest One Academic