[A study of the phases of audiovisual interaction]

A study was made of the dependence of errors in recognizing visual and discriminating acoustic stimuli and of the reaction time (RT), on the duration of intersignal intervals (ISI) (10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 400, 600 and 1000 msec). With longer ISI a decrease in RT has been found, particularly pronounced in responses to the second stimuli of the pair. RT to the visual (acoustic) stimulus increases not only when an acoustic (photic) signal is present in the complex, but also in the case of its anticipation. The level of errors in recognizing visual and discriminating acoustic stimuli does not depend on ISI duration. The results so obtained are discussed as related to psychological refractory period and to interaction of sensorimotor channels of the human brain.