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Auditory scene context facilitates visual recognition of objects in consistent visual scenes
Ryosuke Niimi1, Takahiro Saiki2, Kazuhiko Yokosawa2
1Faculty of Humanities, Niigata University, Niigata, Japan. niimi@human.niigata-u.ac.jp.
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics
|March 28, 2023
Summary
Auditory scene context aids visual object recognition only when the visual scene is consistent. Consistent sounds enhance object naming, but only if the visual background matches the sound, suggesting indirect effects.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive psychology
- Neuroscience
- Perception
Background:
- Visual object recognition benefits from scene consistency.
- Scene gist representations explain this effect.
- The crossmodal nature of this effect is unexplored.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if the scene consistency effect in visual object recognition is crossmodal.
- To determine if auditory context influences visual object naming accuracy.
Main Methods:
- Four experiments assessed visual object naming accuracy.
- Participants heard 4-second sound clips followed by a visual object in a scene.
- Sound conditions included consistent, inconsistent, or control sounds relative to the visual scene.
Main Results:
- Consistent sounds improved object naming when visual scenes were contextually appropriate (e.g., forest sound for a bear in a forest).
- No significant effect of sound conditions was observed when visual scenes were inconsistent or blank.
- Auditory scene context appears to have a limited direct impact on visual object recognition.
Conclusions:
- Auditory scene context's influence on visual object recognition is weak or indirect.
- Consistent auditory scenes may facilitate visual processing, indirectly aiding object recognition.
- The crossmodal scene consistency effect is primarily driven by visual context congruence.
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