Hand movement deviations in a visual search task with cross modal cuing

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the cross-modal effects of an auditory organization on a visual search task and to investigate the influence of the level of detail in instructions describing or hinting at the associations between auditory stimuli and the possible locations of a visual target. In addition to measuring the participants’ reaction times, we paid special attention to tracking the hand movements toward the target. According to the results, the auditory stimuli unassociated with the target locations slightly –but significantly- increased the deviation of the hand movement from the path leading to the target location. The increase in the deviation depended on the degree of association between auditory stimuli and target locations, albeit not on the level of detail in the instructions about the task.