DOI
https://doi.org/10.25772/A6C8-PN40
Defense Date
2014
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science
Department
Biomedical Engineering
First Advisor
Martin Lenhardt
Abstract
Many of the studies examining cognitive control during selective attention across different sensory modalities conflict. This study was designed to study the effect of an irrelevant visual stimulus and an auditory distraction of backward speech on a forced attention dichotic listening test. I predicted that the visual stimulus and backward speech would not have a significant effect on the ear advantage. The results showed that all subjects were able to force their attention to the ear regardless of the visual or auditory distracters. In addition, I found that an irrelevant visual stimulus affects auditory attention more so in the left visual field than the right visual field. This proves that top-down processing can override bottom-processing and auditory tasks demanding full processing capacity limit the processing of the irrelevant visual stimulus.
Rights
© The Author
Is Part Of
VCU University Archives
Is Part Of
VCU Theses and Dissertations
Date of Submission
8-19-2014