Musical Novices Are Unable to Judge Musical Quality from Brief Video Clips: A Failed Replication of Tsay (2014).

Research focusing on "thin slicing" suggests in making judgements of others' moods, personality traits, and relationships, we are able to make relatively reliable decisions based on a small amount of information. In some instances, this can be done in a matter of a few seconds. A similar result was found with regard to the judgement of musical quality of ensemble performances by Tsay (2014), wherein musical novices were able to reliably choose the winner of a music competition based on the visual information only (but not auditory or audiovisual information).

Remember the past, plan for the future: How interactions between risk perception and behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic can inform future Canadian public health policy.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic necessitated the implementation of numerous temporary public health policies, including social distancing, masking, and movement limitations. These types of measures require most citizens to follow them to be effective at a population level. This study examined population adherence to emergency public health measures using early data collected in the Spring of 2020, when all Canadian jurisdictions were under relatively strict measures.

The impact of attentional demands on audiovisual integration depends on task-specific components.

Research investigating how attentional demands impacts audiovisual (AV) integration has used a variety of multisensory tasks and procedures to manipulate attentional demands, leading to very differing results. Also, the secondary tasks used to increase attentional demands draw on the sensory modalities already being investigated; for example, a visual distracter task may be used to increase attentional demands in an audiovisual integration task. It is therefore not clear whether the additional task interfered with sensory processing or with audiovisual integration.

Speech and non-speech measures of audiovisual integration are not correlated.

Many natural events generate both visual and auditory signals, and humans are remarkably adept at integrating information from those sources. However, individuals appear to differ markedly in their ability or propensity to combine what they hear with what they see. Individual differences in audiovisual integration have been established using a range of materials, including speech stimuli (seeing and hearing a talker) and simpler audiovisual stimuli (seeing flashes of light combined with tones).

Evaluating the mental health and well-being of Canadian healthcare workers during the COVID-19 outbreak.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare systems have been under extreme levels of stress due to increases in patient distress and patient deaths. While additional research and public health funding initiatives can alleviate these systemic issues, it is also important to consider the ongoing mental health and well-being of professionals working in healthcare. By surveying healthcare workers working in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic, we found that there was an elevated level of depressive symptomatology in that population.

Effects of Audiovisual Memory Cues on Working Memory Recall.

Previous studies have focused on topics such as multimodal integration and object discrimination, but there is limited research on the effect of multimodal learning in memory. Perceptual studies have shown facilitative effects of multimodal stimuli for learning; the current study aims to determine whether this effect persists with memory cues. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect that audiovisual memory cues have on memory recall, as well as whether the use of multiple memory cues leads to higher recall.

Response orientation modulates pitch-space relationships: the ROMPR effect.

Congruency between auditory and visuospatial stimuli has been previously shown to affect responses to multisensory stimulus pairs, and congruency between stimuli and response devices may play a role in response speed and accuracy. Across two experiments, we tested whether the accuracy and speed of pitch judgments were affected by a congruent or incongruent paired visual stimulus, and whether the relationship was modulated by response orientation. In Experiment 1, participants using a vertically (transversely) oriented keyboard demonstrated a large crossmodal vertical effect, but a minimal crossmodal horizontal effect.

Individual differences in multiple object tracking, attentional cueing, and age account for variability in the capacity of audiovisual integration.

There has been a recent increase in individual differences research within the field of audiovisual perception (Spence & Squire, 2003, Current Biology, 13(13), R519-R521), and furthering the understanding of audiovisual integration capacity with an individual differences approach is an important facet within this line of research. Across four experiments, participants were asked to complete an audiovisual integration capacity task (cf. Van der Burg, Awh, & Olivers, 2013, Psychological Science, 24(3), 345-351; Wilbiks & Dyson, 2016, PLOS ONE 11(12), e0168304; 2018, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 44(6), 871-884), along with differing combinations of additional perceptual tasks.

Musical Training Improves Audiovisual Integration Capacity under Conditions of High Perceptual Load.

In considering capacity measures of audiovisual integration, it has become apparent that there is a wide degree of variation both within (based on unimodal and multimodal stimulus characteristics) and between participants. Recent work has discussed performance on a number of cognitive tasks that can form a regression model accounting for nearly a quarter of the variation in audiovisual integration capacity. The current study involves an investigation of whether different elements of musicality in participants can contribute to additional variation in capacity.

Audiovisual integration capacity modulates as a function of illusory visual contours, visual display circumference, and sound type.

Research into the capacity of audiovisual integration has previously assessed whether capacity is strictly limited to a single item, or whether it can exceed one item under certain environmental conditions. More recently, investigations have turned to examining the effects of various stimulus factors on capacity. Across two experiments, we looked at a number of factors that were expected to play a modulatory role on capacity.

Effects of Temporal Distribution on Utility of Temporal Factors in Competitive Audio-Visual Perceived Synchrony.

The perception of audio-visual synchrony is affected by both temporal coincidence and stimulus congruency factors. In situations when temporal and stimulus information are not in agreement, the perceiver must rely on the relative informative value of both factors in deciding which of multiple potential binding candidates are most likely to be of a common source to a target. Previous research has shown that, all being equal, participants tend to rely primarily on temporal information, and only take stimulus information into consideration when temporal information is ambiguous.

The contribution of perceptual factors and training on varying audiovisual integration capacity.

The suggestion that the capacity of audiovisual integration has an upper limit of 1 was challenged in 4 experiments using perceptual factors and training to enhance the binding of auditory and visual information. Participants were required to note a number of specific visual dot locations that changed in polarity when a critical auditory stimulus was presented, under relatively fast (200-ms stimulus onset asynchrony [SOA]) and slow (700-ms SOA) rates of presentation. In Experiment 1, transient cross-modal congruency between the brightness of polarity change and pitch of the auditory tone was manipulated.

Effects of vocal training in a musicophile with congenital amusia.

Congenital amusia is a condition in which an individual suffers from a deficit of musical pitch perception and production. Individuals suffering from congenital amusia generally tend to abstain from musical activities. Here, we present the unique case of Tim Falconer, a self-described musicophile who also suffers from congenital amusia.

The Dynamics and Neural Correlates of Audio-Visual Integration Capacity as Determined by Temporal Unpredictability, Proactive Interference, and SOA.

Over 5 experiments, we challenge the idea that the capacity of audio-visual integration need be fixed at 1 item. We observe that the conditions under which audio-visual integration is most likely to exceed 1 occur when stimulus change operates at a slow rather than fast rate of presentation and when the task is of intermediate difficulty such as when low levels of proactive interference (3 rather than 8 interfering visual presentations) are combined with the temporal unpredictability of the critical frame (Experiment 2), or, high levels of proactive interference are combined with the temporal predictability of the critical frame (Experiment 4). Neural data suggest that capacity might also be determined by the quality of perceptual information entering working memory.

Negative outcomes evoke cyclic irrational decisions in Rock, Paper, Scissors.

Rock, Paper, Scissors (RPS) represents a unique gaming space in which the predictions of human rational decision-making can be compared with actual performance. Playing a computerized opponent adopting a mixed-strategy equilibrium, participants revealed a non-significant tendency to over-select Rock. Further violations of rational decision-making were observed using an inter-trial analysis where participants were more likely to switch their item selection at trial n + 1 following a loss or draw at trial n, revealing the strategic vulnerability of individuals following the experience of negative rather than positive outcome.

Effects of temporal asynchrony and stimulus magnitude on competitive audio-visual binding.

When making decisions as to whether or not to bind auditory and visual information, temporal and stimulus factors both contribute to the presumption of multimodal unity. In order to study the interaction between these factors, we conducted an experiment in which auditory and visual stimuli were placed in competitive binding scenarios, whereby an auditory stimulus was assigned to either a primary or a secondary anchor in a visual context (VAV) or a visual stimulus was assigned to either a primary or secondary anchor in an auditory context (AVA). Temporal factors were manipulated by varying the onset of the to-be-bound stimulus in relation to the two anchors.

The influence of previous environmental history on audio-visual binding occurs during visual-weighted but not auditory-weighted environments.

Although there is substantial evidence for the adjustment of audio-visual binding as a function of the distribution of audio-visual lag, it is not currently clear whether adjustment can take place as a function of task demands. To address this, participants took part in competitive binding paradigms whereby a temporally roving auditory stimulus was assigned to one of two visual anchors (visual-weighted; VAV), or, a temporally roving visual stimulus was assigned to one of two auditory anchors (auditory-weighted; AVA). Using a blocked design it was possible to assess the malleability of audiovisual binding as a function of both the repetition and change of paradigm.