LE3 .A278 2015

2015

Brodeur, Darlene

Acadia University

Bachelor of Science

Honours

Psychology with Applied Option

Psychology

Cross-modal and within-modal effects of emotion on vision and audition were examined, as emotion’s effects on cross-modal perception have not been comprehensively investigated. Using neutral and negative arousing cue words presented visually or aurally, participants did a same/different task with the orientation of two visual sine-wave gratings, or the frequency of two auditory tones. Results showed an effect of emotion on cross-modal perception, such that negative arousing cues only aided perception relative to neutral cues in the within-modality visual task. A subsequent experiment used calibration trials to lower participant variation between conditions. Though not significant, results showed similar patterns to the first with the exception that higher d-primes were observed for negative arousing cues than neutral cues in the auditory-visual task. Results show that emotion affects perception cross-modally, yet the effect varies with modality. Keywords: Emotion, perception, cross-modal, vision, audition

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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:1230