Tones slow down visual responses in a visual-spatial task

The current study examined how simple tones affect speeded visual responses in a visual-spatial sequence learning task. Across the three reported experiments, participants were presented with a visual target that appeared in different locations on a touchscreen monitor and they were instructed to touch the visual targets as quickly as possible. Response times typically sped up across training and participants were slower to respond to the visual stimuli when the sequences were paired with tones. Moreover, these interference effects were more pronounced early in training and explicit instructions directing attention to the visual modality had little effect on eliminating auditory interference, suggesting that these interference effects may stem from bottom-up factors and do not appear to be under attentional control. These findings have implications on tasks that require the processing of simultaneously presented auditory and visual information and provide support for a proposed mechanism underlying auditory dominance on a task that is typically better suited for the visual modality.