Seeing and hearing a word: combining eye and ear is more efficient than combining the parts of a word.

ABSTRACT: To understand why human sensitivity for complex objects is so low, we study how word identification combines eye and ear or parts of a word (features, letters, syllables). Our observers identify printed and spoken words presented concurrently or separately. When researchers measure threshold (energy of the faintest visible or audible signal) they may report either sensitivity (one over the human threshold) or efficiency (ratio of the best possible threshold to the human threshold). When the best possible algorithm identifies an object (like a word) in noise, its threshold is independent of how many parts the object has. But, with human observers, efficiency depends on the task. In some tasks, human observers combine parts efficiently, needing hardly more energy to identify an object with m

SUBMITTER: Dubois M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3667182 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature