An examination of parallel versus coactive processing accounts of redundant-target audiovisual signal processing

Abstract

We ask whether auditory and visual signals are processed using a consistent mental architecture across variable experimental designs. It is well-known that in an auditory-visual task requiring divided attention, responses are often faster for redundant audiovisual targets compared to unisensory targets. Importantly, these redundant-target effects can theoretically be explained by several different mental architectures, which are explored in this paper. These include: independent-race models, parallel interactive models, and coactive models. Earlier results, especially redundant-target processing times which are faster than predicted by the race-model inequality (Miller, 1982), implicated coa..