Listen to Your Heart: Examining Modality Dominance Using Cross-Modal Oddball Tasks.

The current study used cross-modal oddball tasks to examine cardiac and behavioral responses to changing auditory and visual information. When instructed to press the same button for auditory and visual oddballs, auditory dominance was found with cross-modal presentation slowing down visual response times more than auditory response times (Experiment 1). When instructed to make separate responses to auditory and visual oddballs, visual dominance was found with cross-modal presentation decreasing auditory discrimination, and participants also made more visual-based than auditory-based errors on cross-modal trials (Experiment 2).

Manipulating the decision making process: Influencing a "gut" reaction.

The present series of studies sought to examine how external factors influence behavioral decision making task performance. Utilizing the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) to assess risky decision making, we examined the influence of a dual task paradigm (Study 1, Study 2), shifting task focus to decision making speed versus accuracy (Study 3), and varied intertrial intervals (Study 4). College student participants completed the IGT and decision making speed and the patterns of IGT selections by deck in the earlier (decision making under ambiguity) and later (decision making under risk) trials were examined.